


Grief

by SgtMac



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-11
Updated: 2013-12-27
Packaged: 2017-12-23 03:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/921239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SgtMac/pseuds/SgtMac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina and Emma arrive in Neverland too late to save Henry, and together make their way through the five stages of grief. Major character death. Post S2 finale. 5-parter. SQ non graphic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Denial.

**Author's Note:**

> This was derived from a prompt on Tumblr from vyownyou. Thank you!

 

  
_She keeps a lock of hair in her pocket_   
_She wears a cross around her neck_   
_Yes, the hair is from a little boy_   
_And the cross is someone she has not met_   
_Not yet_

**-The Black Crowes/She Talks To Angels**

*** ***

DENIAL.

*** ***

It takes them three weeks to finally see the shores of Neverland off in the distance (landfall is about half a day more of ship-travel away, Hook tells them, his expression grave), and though absolutely no one dares to say it, they all know that this is about two and a half weeks too long (and too late) for this horrible little adventure of theirs to end well.

But no one dares to actually admit it.

Instead, they say tritely obnoxious little things such as, “we’ll be on our way home in no time” and “Henry will be fine because he’s a tough kid” and when doubt really starts to set in for both Regina and Emma during the incredibly cold and wet night before they’re due to finally arrive on the beach, David even tries to convince everyone by reminding them that Henry is the son of a Queen and a Savior. Like that should make him invincible.

And it probably should have worked, too. Should have at least led to a smile or two.

Instead, all it does manage to do is upset Regina and Emma even more.

The moment the well-meaning words are out of David’s mouth, and he’s smiling that smile of his that’s endearing and infuriating in equal measures, Regina bolts to her feet, her spine snapping to attention. “I need air,” she announces, her tone cold and oddly empty. She jams her hands into her coat pockets, and with her head held unnaturally high, strides from the room.

“Emma,” David says, his eyes wide with confusion. He looks at his daughter and sees the fear stamped into the suddenly apparent lines of her face. “He is okay,” her father assures her, his expression one of the kind of righteous certainty that comes from having always found a way to win. “We’re going to get to him in time. You have to believe that. We will get to him.”

“We don’t know that,” Emma replies. She doesn’t bother adding what her heart has been telling her for the last two and a half weeks; that it’s too late for Henry. That maybe it’s too late for all of them, and this is just theatre.

“Emma,” Snow says, her voice soft and soothing in a way that frankly makes Emma’s skin itch right now. “We have to keep hope. We have to believe.”

The sheriff opens her mouth to reply, but then snaps it shut and shakes her head. It’s the only way that she manages to keep a horrifying sob from breaking its way out because the truth is that she doesn’t believe anymore.

Because deep down, she _knows_ that her son is already dead.

“I need to check on Regina,” Emma says when she’s finally able to speak again. She doesn’t allow time for anyone to argue because honestly what could they say to her that would dissuade her. They could offer her more false assurances and empty sayings, but they can’t provide her with anything that she can actually put her faith her. They can’t give her truth.

She’s not honestly sure that she actually wants the truth right now, but she does know (believe, anyway) that she doesn’t want any more lies, either.

Which means that there really is only one place left to go.

She stands up, offers the fakest smile she has in her arsenal (the look Hook throws her way tells her that he, at the very least, sees right through her) and then turns and leaves her parents, the pirate and Gold to their dinner.

She’s not hungry, anyway.

 

*** ***

“None of this matters,” Regina says to her as she steps out onto the deck. Rain is coming down sideways, and it doesn’t take but a minute for her to feel the sharp prickling pain of the ice water against her cheeks.

“It does. You’re just…you’re just afraid. We both are.”

“Of course,” Regina agrees as she stares out towards the violently crashing waves of the ocean, her eyes never settling for long before jumping away. Her hands are gripped around the railing, her fingers digging deep into the hard wood of it. “But I think we _both_ know that it’s more than that.”

“I can’t believe that…I can’t believe that he’s gone. I can’t believe that this is all pointless,” Emma insists. She moves to stand next to Regina, suddenly desperately needing to have someone at least physically in this hell with her.

“This?” Regina questions. “What exactly is this besides a desperate rescue attempt and a last ditch effort by several monsters to be more than that?”

“This is about Henry,” Emma says. “It’s about saving our son.”

Regina says nothing, just gazes out at the water, her fingers tightening.

“Regina…”

“You never were very good at trusting your instincts, were you, dear?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They say a mother knows when her child is in danger or hurt.” Her tone is oddly mild, like she’s stating a fact that fascinates her.

“Regina…”

“You know what I feel?” Regina asks, turning to look at Emma, her eyes bubbling with tears that threaten to merge with the rain. “I feel _nothing_.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“No? It either means that Henry is…” she stops, her face contorting for a moment before she forces a cold mask back into place. “Or I have even less connection to the child I raised than I thought I did.” She laughs bitterly. “I have never before hoped so dearly for the latter to be true. That’s all the hope I have left in me; the hope that my son feels nothing for me because that might explain why there’s this pit in my stomach telling me that…”

“It’s a myth, Regina,” Emma insists. “Nothing more than that.”

“It’s not. When he was trapped in that mine, I felt…I _felt_ his fear. I…” She locks eyes with Emma, her fear and heartbreak suddenly palpable. It’s more than a bit terrifying to see Regina’s mask fall away so easily, the terror she feels digging vivid lines across olive flesh as her chin wobbles. “Did you feel his fear then?” she asks. “Can you feel him now? Tell me you can. Please?”

“No,” Emma answers, swallowing harshly against her own fear. “Not then.”

“But now? Now you can?” Regina’s eyes bloom with desperation.

“No,” Emma replies carefully. “But that doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a myth.” She says this again, her words far more pointed and urgent.

Because even though she knows the truth, she can’t accept it. She might not want any more lies, but she suddenly realized that she needs them.

They both do.

“Regina,” Emma tries again, her hand reaching out and closing around the cold flesh of Regina’s left forearm “Greg and Tamara kidnapped Henry for a specific reason. This Shadow guy wanted him for something; he’s not just going to kill him. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I would think by now, my dear, that you would have understand that very little about my world makes any sense,” Regina hisses as she pulls away.

“Okay, you’re right, but…but we need to believe, okay? We _need_ to.”

“You sound like your father. Like your mother. I expect more of you.” The words are harsh and almost violent, a spiteful surge of frightened vitriol.

Deep down, Emma knows that Regina’s words aren’t exactly personal in nature, but something ugly happens inside of her when she hears them; something that feels a whole lot like what snapping twig might sound like.

“And I expect more of you,” Emma fires back, trying to forget about the fact that her mother and father _had_ uttered almost the exact same words just a few minutes prior. “I expect you to be strong for him _and_ for me.”

“No, what you want is for me to pretend like you are. Like they are.”

“No, I just want you to…”

“To what, Emma? What do you want me to do?”

“Believe with me.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s all I have right now,” the sheriff whispers, her shoulders sagging dramatically. “Because if I don’t, I have…I have nothing.”

“We,” Regina corrects, her eyes jumping back to the waves. She shivers a bit, and it’s then that Emma notices that the former queen is absolutely soaked to the bone. Her face is red and stung from the cold and rain.

If she doesn’t catch some kind of illness from this, it’ll be a damned miracle.

Not that it’ll matter if Regina is right and…

No, Emma thinks, the voice in her head almost violently vehement.

_No._

She doesn’t care what she _thinks_ she knows.

She has to believe.

They both do.

“We,” Emma agrees. “ _We_ are in this together.”

“Fine,” Regina says, turning to look at her again. “Then promise me that…promise me that _our_ son is alive. You believe so much? _Promise me_.”

“I…”

“Promise me.”

Emma knows better. She does. But then the words are spilling out of lips that are chattering from the cold before her brain can catch up, “I promise.”

“I’ll kill you if this is a lie,” Regina says, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“I know.” What she almost adds is what she thinks she might do to herself if she’s wrong, but the words freeze in her throat because this is hope, right?

Hope, not denial.

Hope.

Faith.

Belief.

All those things that a member of the Charming family is supposed to have.

All those things that she has never had.

They’re the most bitter of lies, the most horrible of empty falsities.

And yet they spill so easily forward. Like a knife through warm butter.

She closes her eyes and prays to the same higher being that had allowed her to have been nearly beaten to death as an ten year old child thanks to the alcoholic rages of a man who was supposed to take care of her.

She prays and hopes and believes.

And she makes the same promise to herself. Over and over again.

He’ll be okay. He _is_ okay.

He is okay.

It’s okay.

It’s _all_ going to be okay.

She looks up at Regina and sees the woman staring back at her, her nearly black eyes glazed over with fear and doubt. But maybe a little hope, too.

“We should get below deck,” Emma says because she thinks if she doesn’t find a way to end this conversation, she’ll try to pull back the promise.

“Someone needs to keep an eye out for trouble,” Regina reminds her.

“Not tonight,” Emma tells her. “Neither one of us can see a damned thing through this rain, and besides, Hook will be up here before long, anyway.”

“You would leave getting to Henry to Hook?”

“No, I would leave captaining this ship to him. There’s nothing either of us can do besides get sick up here. You said you expected more of me? Well I expect you to be by my side when we storm the island to save Henry, and you sure as shit won’t be able to do that if you catch yourself pneumonia.”

“Even if I were to, nothing would stop me –“

“Maybe you think that, but I’ve been there, and I know how weak the human body can get, Regina. I would think after what you just went through with Greg and Tamara, you would know, too.”

“And yet here I am. Still alive. Still standing,” Regina snaps back, her eyes blazing with pride and anger. This is a woman who doesn’t know how to not fight back even when maybe it would be better not to.

“Yeah, okay, but even you have limits. Henry can’t afford those and neither can I. Now we are going downstairs and we are both going to bed because in the morning, we are going to find our son. Alive.”

She turns then and walks away.

All the while hoping that Regina will be right behind her.

She is.

 

TBC...


	2. Anger

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Character death, attempted murder, violence, profanity and heartbreak.
> 
> Sorry.

_I never knew what enough was_

_Until I'd had more than my share_

_Then I let the darkness in_

_It was then I lost the dare_

_It was then I lost the day_

**Jonatha Brooke/Inconsolable**

*** 

**ANGER.**

*******

Morning comes both too quickly and too slowly for all of the restless and ultimately sleepless passengers aboard the _Jolly Roger_. When the sun finally breaks over the horizon, lifting high up into the sky, they're within rowing distance of the shores of Neverland, and suddenly all anyone feels is fear.

"All right, then," Hook says as he glances out at the fogged over beach. "We can row it in, but it gives them time to see us and that puts us at an operational disadvantage since we'll be fighting from within a wee dinghy."

"We'll transport," Regina states with a tone of absolute authority. There are bruises beneath her eyes that signal her exhaustion, but her posture is strong and unwavering, her determination absolute. "Rumple and I have enough magic between the two of us to get all of us over there."

"What about the _Jolly_ _Roger_?" David asks. "Can we keep the same whatever it is on it that we've been using to keep her from being seen?"

"We can," Rumple states. He's oddly subdued, but Emma convinces herself that that in and of itself means very little; he's a strange little man, anyway.

"Then do it," Hook orders, his eyebrow lifting when Rumple tosses him a look of pure disgust and derision meant to tell him that he doesn't take orders from a wife-stealing pirate. "Unless you would prefer them to light our only way back home ablaze. In which case, please feel free to–"

"Not now, guys," Emma murmurs. "Cast the spell, Gold. I want my son."

"It's already cast," Rumple states. "We're just not removing it. However, in order for me to keep my energies properly and mostly focused there, you'll need to assist the Queen in getting us over to the island."

"Me? I don't –"

"I'll assist you," Regina says crisply, her jaw ticking anxiously.

"Wait a minute," David starts. "You're going to teach her –"

" _David_ ," Snow soothes, her hand in his. "Whatever it takes is what we do." It's the first time that Emma has ever heard the sound of honesty in her mother's voice. There are no false hopes being presented there like some kind of absurd edict from above, just the laid bare truth of the situation.

It unnerves Emma and drives home for her just how serious this is.

Just how horrifying this could end up for all of them.

"Right," David agrees, his blue eyes conflicted and unsettled.

"Step close," Regina orders before adding an impatient snap of her fingers.

"Do we need to hold hands?" Hook asks, and maybe it's meant to lighten the mood, but if so, it fails rather spectacularly because no one is laughing.

None of this is the least bit funny and even the mildest of gallows' humor feels inappropriate right now because Henry is only eleven and there are two terrified women standing next to each other who both feel like they're on a doomed mission that will end in them finding their son's body.

"Not everyone," Regina states, her tone sharp and bored. Emma thinks she hears the sound of somewhat strained breathing as well, but before she can focus too much on that, the former queen barrels ahead with, "The rest of you will want to try and envision the beach in your minds to assist us with focus, but I will need Miss Swan's hand in order to draw out her magic."

"Draw out my –"

"Give me your hand, Emma," Regina says, her voice strangely gentle.

The sheriff doesn't hesitate; her hand shoots out and curls tightly around Regina's. What she feels there is soft but unusually sweaty. A glance up at the former queen's face confirms for her that Regina is terribly pale.

Almost sickly one might say.

Reckless exposure to cold wet weather will do that.

A glare from Regina – one that clearly says "don't start" stills her tongue. Instead, quietly, her nerves blazing like she's on uppers, "What now?"

"Close your eyes and concentrate on the beach. Visualize all of us being there instead of here. And remember _why_ we need to be there."

"That's it?"

"No, that's _all_ ," Regina corrects. "That's all you need to see in your mind."

"Give in to what you're feeling," Rumple suggests.

"What I'm –"

"What you're both feeling," he corrects.

Emma watches as Regina's eyes slice over towards Rumple, anger lighting within them for a few seconds before she returns her cool gaze to Emma. "He's right," she says. "The more you feel, the more accurate you'll be."

"Got it," the sheriff says with a sharp nod. "Okay, let's do this then." She looks at her parents who are standing just outside of the circle. A soft meant to be reassuring smile from her mother lets her know that they're ready.

But they're not.

 

 

* * *

They arrive on the beach in a dizzying whirl of bluish-purple smoke (apparently this is the color you get when a Savior and a Queen mix magic). The moment Emma's feet settle upon the sand, she doubles over towards the nearest bit of greenery that she can find and starts retching.

"It gets better," Rumple assures her with a smirk. "With practice."

"That's just…that's just awesome," Emma mutters as she wipes at her mouth. She feels her mother's hand on her elbow, helping her straighten up.

"Are you all right?" Snow asks.

She doesn't answer, instead sweeping her eyes towards Regina who is gazing up the beach, towards plumes of smoke that rise above the trees.

"What do you see?"

"He's up there," Regina replies, her voice so devastatingly soft.

"How do you know?" David asks, frowning as he gazes up the beach.

Emma ignores him, instead striding towards Regina and moving to stand in front of her so that they can look at each other. "You can feel him now, right?" she asks. There's desperate hope in her voice, urgent and pleading.

"No," Regina says simply, dully. "I can't. I still feel…nothing." She steps around Emma, then, and starts up the beach, the high heels of her not right for Neverland boots sinking deeply into the sand and troubling her steps.

"Regina, wait. Wait!"

If the former queen hears her, she shows no sign of it. She keeps moving, her gait awkward and unbalanced and her breathing harsh. She coughs as she walks, but then keeps going, getting faster with each stride. That she's clearly coming down with – or already has – some illness is lost on her.

Emma looks at her parents, at Rumple and at Hook, and then with a shake of her head, she races after Regina, knowing that she needs to be beside her. Knowing that they have to deal with this – whatever this is – together.

"Regina."

"He's there," Regina says again as she comes to an abrupt halt in front of a thick row of greenery. The smoke is just up ahead, completely visible now.

"Okay, but wait…wait a sec."

"Why?"

"Because we need to be careful. If we just barge in without looking first –"

"I don't care," Regina snarls in response, the cold gaze in her darkly furious eyes almost challenging. "I want my son. Come with me or don't." She flicks her hand and a fireball forms there, large and brilliantly orange.

"All right," Emma sighs. "Then let's –"

She doesn't get the chance to finish her sentence before Regina is surging forward, breaking through the dense greenery that is separating them from the camp of those who had taken their son.

Separating them from Henry.

The sound she hears next will stay with her for the rest of her life. It will become part of every nightmare that she will ever have and it'll wake her in a cold sweat and leave her sobbing into her pillows like a small child.

And it's just a scream – just a guttural shriek ripped from Regina's lungs.

No, it's not just that; it's the sound of loss beyond description.

It's loud and hysterical and gut wrenching beyond the telling of it.

Her brain shorting out, Emma breaks through the bushes, and comes up behind the former queen who is standing ramrod straight, her now extinguished hands clenched tightly at her sides, her body shaking like she's in the middle of some kind of fit. "Regina," she breathes. "What –"

That's when she sees him.

That's when she sees their son.

He's tied to a tree with thick vines, his small muscle-less arms strung up painfully high above his unnaturally lolling (his neck is broken, her mind screams at her) head, his green eyes glassy and staring forever forward, but no longer seeing anything at all.

His face gray and bruised and his lips cold and blue.

"Henry," she gasps, vaguely aware that Regina is still screaming, the sound hoarse and broken, like it's trying to choke its way out of her. Emma claps a hand over her own mouth to stop a similar cry from breaking loose.

There's yellow smoke rising up from a campfire a few feet away from the tree, the smell sweet and cloying. It clogs Emma's throat and she gasps both for air and for grounding. Her stomach rolls and she pitches forward as if to throw up again, but nothing comes out. Her body shakes and for a moment her vision goes completely black beneath the hideous weight of her shock.

"Oh my God," she hears her mother say as she arrived. "Henry. No. No!"

"Jesus," David adds on, and she feels his hand on her arm, his fingers closing, tightly – protectively - around her. She thinks she hears Hook mutter an equivalent kind of curse, but all the noise just fades into the background.

Which is when it occurs to her then that Regina is no longer screaming. No longer standing, either. She's crumbled to the ground, her knees scraping brutally against the dirt. Because she not a Queen here, not a Mayor.

Just a broken Mother.

They both are.

She pulls away from David and steps hesitantly towards Regina, her badly shaking hand extended as if to try to offer the former queen…something. Her mind whirls and twists and a thousand things go through her head.

Most they come down to one simple thought, though: This isn't happening.

It can't be.

This is a just a fucking awful nightmare and in a few minutes, she's going to wake up screaming in own bed, but then everything will be okay.

Only Henry is still staring and until she closes his eyes, he always will be.

"Regina," she hears, and she's mildly surprised that the name isn't coming from her lips. "Regina, you have to stop," the person – her mother – says.

She pulls her eyes away from Henry and back towards Regina, and that's when she sees the bright purple energy pulsing around her. That's when she sees the way Regina is clenching her fists, her neck tightly corded and her face contorted into an expression of grief and fury and anger and God…

Regina's going to fucking blow and kill them all.

For a moment – the briefest of them – she actually considers letting Regina do it because Henry is tied to a tree and he's just eleven and there aren't words for how very very wrong and horrible and just not right this is.

There aren't words for the gaping hole that she feels within her heart.

For the pain she knows will never go away.

So maybe she lets Regina go boom and then it can all be over.

It can all be –

But then she's jumping forward and wrapping her arms as tight as she possibly can around Regina's shuddering shimmering body and this is either suicide or it's some kind of frantic support or it's the madness of both.

"Don't," she whispers, her mouth close to Regina's ear. "Please."

Regina's only response is to scream again and then she feels the surge go through her body, and she thinks that this is absolutely the end because for a moment, she's just hot, hot, hot and everything is burning. She hears her mother call out for her, but there's sweat pouring down her and Regina and there's magic and power pulsating like a live electrical wire between them.

"Stop," she pleads, her teeth chattering not from the cold but from the pain of so much heat and energy. She thinks that she's about to explode supernova style. "You're hurting me. You're hurting yourself. Please. Stop."

She thinks she hears what sounds like a hiccuping sob, the kind of sound that someone makes when their body is incapable of anything else. She thinks she hears Regina call out for Henry and then do it again and again.

She tightens her hold and presses her full frame against Regina, practically wrapping herself around the former queen as she pulls in all the magic that she can. It hurts so very badly, but it hurts less than her heart does.

And then just like that, it's over.

Regina sags forward, her head in her hands, sobbing violently.

"Emma," David calls out. "Emma are you –"

"I'm fine. We're fine." It's the most grotesque of lies but it's what she has.

She's spent her whole life with those words on her lips because it's always been what people have wanted – needed - her to say. She never thinks to say anything else even when it's so plainly obvious how much of a lie it is.

She hears Regina gasping and gulping and breathing like she can't manage to find a way to pull air into her lungs. Emma feels a violent shudder go through Regina, almost a convulsion and she thinks that this must be the aftershocks of a magical explosion that had only been halted thanks to…

Well honestly, Emma can't even begin to guess how she'd managed to absorb Regina's magic nor does she really know why she'd done what she'd done. _Had_ it been suicide? Had it been the need to save Regina once again? Had it been the need to save everyone from getting blown to hell and back?

Or had it just been the instinct that has continuously drawn her towards Regina even in the very worst of situations.

Perhaps even more now.

She has no idea nor any care to really think of any of these things right now.

Her eyes jump up towards Henry. "Get him down from there."

She'd do it herself but she's pretty damned sure that she couldn't stand if she tried to right now; it's not every day you absorb about a million magical volts into your body. She's vibrating with the magic, her jaw grinding.

"Don't you touch him," Regina growls out suddenly, her head snapping up, her eyes blazing a bright furious purple. "I will kill you if you try." The rage is sudden and sharp and whatever comfort she'd been deriving from Emma, whatever she'd been allowing, she rejects it now, her anger blisteringly hot.

"Regina," Snow starts, her eyes wide like she knows exactly what's about to happen here, and perhaps – considering their shared history – she does.

"He's my son and you will not lay a hand on him."

"He's my grandson," Snow pleads. "Please."

It's like a switch gets flipped in Regina's brain, like she suddenly remembers exactly how it is that Snow White is related to Henry. She snaps around and glares at Emma, the purple in her eyes deepening to a disturbing violet.

"You lied to me," she growls, her voice as low as Emma has ever heard it. "You promised that he would be all right. That he was. You promised me."

"I…" Emma stops short, the tears cascading down her cheeks, and her face screwing up into an expression of horrified grief. "I'm sorry."

"Oh, but you will be, my dear," Regina assures her, her typically beautiful face contorting into a grotesque snarl. This is every bit the very worst of the Evil Queen. "I promised _you_ that I would kill you if you lied to me and I will."

"Then do it. Kill me," Emma says, her jaw tightening and her shoulders squaring as if preparing for a fight. "Or don't because he was my son, too."

It's only because Hook manages to grab the Queen as she lunges forward that Emma is able to take another breath. The rage she sees in Regina's eyes is unlike anything else that she has ever seen before.

This is the pain of a loss that can't ever be compensated for.

This is the loss of all hope.

Emma falls backwards, a broken and damaged Savior realizing that she doesn't actually have the strength to fight. That she doesn't want to.

"You lied," Regina screams at her as she struggles against Hook.

"I'm sorry," Emma repeats, her voice just barely a whisper. She wants to say that it'd been a promise that she'd never wanted to make, but why bother?

"Stop this," Hook says to Regina, his voice oddly gentle. "You want to kill Swan, do it later, but not while your boy is up there. Not while he can see."

"He can't see anymore," Regina hisses. "Let me go or I'll -"

"No."

She fights against him, and perhaps if she focused and used her magic, she could even get away from him, but right now, he's stronger than her.

Or at least he is with help.

She can feel the touch of Rumple's magic upon her. It's light for once, simply meant to keep her in place. It's not unlike the magic that the Blue Fairy had once used upon her to capture her. Her eyes meet with him and she's almost pleading him to release her because he should understand.

And doesn't she have the right to kill the woman who had…

Who had…who had promised her…promised her that Henry would be…

But he's not. She'd lied and he's…and he's on the tree.

She suddenly sags heavily against Hook. "I should have killed you when I had the chance," she says, though she's not actually even looking over at Emma. Her glassy unfocused eyes are staring towards Henry's body.

"Yeah, well, like Hook said," Emma says, her voice sounding so very tired and broken. "You'll have plenty of time to make me pay later, but for now, I'm getting our son down from that goddamned tree." Anger floods her body and her mind then because how dare Regina blame her for this. "Now you can sit there and scream at me about how you're going to kill me or you can help me; it's your choice, Regina. For once, make the right fucking one."

Maybe it's unfair, but then again, she thinks, if it hadn't been for them being down in the cave trying to save Regina's worthless life, Henry never would have been kidnapped and he wouldn't be here now…he wouldn't be…

Swallowing back guilt and rage and the sudden shame of her fury towards Regina, Emma stands up then, her legs wobbling and her ankle twisting. There's sharp pain again, but she doesn't feel it. She can tell David is at her side, but she barely sees him. She moves step after step towards the tree.

"We can do this," David tells her. "You don't have to."

"I do." She looks over at Regina. "He's our son. This is something that _we_ need to do." She takes a breath and then holds out her hand.

Regina feels Hooks arms release their hold on her and then Rumple's magic dissipates into the cold air like oily smoke. They certainly both know that it is a risk to let her go because she's still vibrating and anger doesn't just drain away within her; it festers and builds and boils and explodes.

It causes curses to be cast and lives to be lost and…

But oh God, Henry is staring right at her.

Even if he isn't.

And she won't kill the woman who had birthed him in front of him.

She doesn't take Emma's hand; she can't and she won't.

But she will help her bring Henry down.

It takes them almost ten minutes to remove his small broken body from the tree, and then for far too long after that, they just sit with him between him.

It occurs to both of his mothers to deny the other the right to hold him.

It occurs to both of them the need to claim ownership over him.

But they're both so damned tired and shattered and even though they'd would like to rage against the other, they simply lack the energy to do so.

"Are we to bury him here?" Hook asks, his tone somber and respectful.

"No, not here," Regina says as she stands up. She doesn't even bother to brush the sand off of herself. It just doesn't matter right now. "Storybrooke. That's where he'd want to be so that's where I'll take him to."

"But not in your vault, right?" Emma counters. "Not there. He's not –"

"My family. Yes, my dear, you have made that quite–"

"That's not what I was going to say. I…I need to be able to see him." She swallows hard. "Please. Please don't…please." She looks up at her parents for support, but just as David is opening his mouth to speak, her mother is shaking her head as if to tell him that this isn't his decision to make.

"We bring him home," Regina says again, not willing to extend anything beyond that. Frankly, the idea of allowing Emma anything is absurd.

Frankly, the idea of allowing Emma to get home to Storybrooke is as well.

The sensible part of her – what little of that there is right now – reminds her that she'll likely have to go through Snow and David and Hook and Rumple to kill Emma, but the Evil Queen – the one who had raged past the point of sanity, the one who had destroyed everything in her path even at the cost of her own soul – assures her that she can do this. That it doesn't matter if she can't because what's the very worst that can happen to her now?

Death?

Well that seems something of a mercy right about now.

"Home," David repeats. "What about the ones who did this?" He glances around, frowning as he takes in the seemingly abandoned camp.

"They're long gone now," Rumple says, following David's gaze. "I expect the Shadow is as well; he got what he wanted."

"And what did he want?" Emma demands. "Why did he want Henry so badly? And why did he…why did he do this?" She doesn't ask the next question which is what kind of monster do you have to be to do something like this to a child. Considering her company, she's frankly afraid to know.

"I expect that he needed your boy's life force," Hook tells her, suddenly unable to meet her eyes. "Probably to sustain himself."

"He could have had anyone. Why Henry?" Emma presses as stands up so that she's standing just a few inches away from Regina.

"I don't know," Hook admits. "But as much as I'm sure all of you would like to make him pay for this, I would suggest that we don't stick around to do so; he assuredly derived some degree of power from what he did."

"He's no match for me," Regina states, her lip curling up.

"I'm afraid that's not the case," Rumple tells her, and then says no more.

"I don't care if it is or isn't," Regina says and Emma has an unnerving feeling of déjà vu, remembering how the former queen had said that just before she'd broken through the shrubbery and found…well what she'd found.

"It's suicide," David states. "That's not what Henry would want."

She growls and snaps around, her eyes lighting up again. "How dare you –"

She never finishes the sentence; in one fluid motion, Emma closes the distance between them with a sharply delivered left hook to an unprepared Regina. It settles across her jaw with a loud hard crack that's both satisfying and horrifying, and then the brunette is tumbling to the ground, her eyes rolling back into the back of her head, and the strength leaving her body.

"All right, then," Hook says, one of his eyebrows up.

Emma regards him for a moment and then gazes back down at Regina.

She hates this woman so very much.

She doesn't hate her at all.

She wants this woman to pay dearly for what's happened here today.

She wants to wrap her arms around her and cry with her for their son.

She wants to rip Regina's heart out and crush it like she'd read about the former queen doing to others. Like she'd done to Graham.

She wants to rip her own heart out and stow it away in a box as Cora had hers simply so that can find a way to not the feel the pain that she is.

The very thought of this disgusts her beyond words.

"She wasn't going to listen to reason," Emma says finally, and then when no one says anything to counter her (and really, how could they), she continues with, "It's time to go home." She can feels the tears rushing down her cheeks, sliding onto her collar drop by drop. "We go home." Her eyes drift over towards Henry's body, his small frame covered up by jackets and coats, his arms gathered together across his chest. "All of us."

"Emma, maybe we should –" David starts.

"Leave her here?" Emma finishes for him. She'd known the moment she'd knocked Regina out – for her own good, she'd told her self – that the suggestion to abandon Regina to the island would arise. "No."

David shifts around anxiously, his gaze falling upon Regina's unconscious form, which lies so very close to Henry's body. "She threatened to kill you for…Emma, she's going to…you don't know what she's like when she's –"

This time, it's Emma who says it. "I don't care. I don't. She _is_ his mother, and he would want me to try to take care of her. You said he wouldn't have wanted her to go on a suicide mission, and that's true, but he would want…he would want us to try to get…" she puts her hand into her hair.

"Okay, then that's what we do," Snow says. Then, to Rumple, her voice authoritative and confident even beneath the almost violent shake of emotion, "Take the shield off the ship, and use your magic to get us back; Emma doesn't have enough without Regina to do it and even if she did…"

"It'll expose the ship," Rumple reminds her, though it seems clear that he's not actually objecting so much as reminding her. In fact, Rumple seems as unsettled and bothered by this whole situation as the rest of the party does.

Well perhaps not quite as much, but still, it's clear that he's been affected.

"We'll take that chance," Snow states. "Please."

"Very well. Bring the Queen within the circle, and yes, someone will need to be touching her being that she won't be able to focus her own thoughts."

"I got her," Snow says, reaching for Regina. To Emma: "You hold Henry."

Emma nods. She drops down, and then reaches out for her son's body. She pulls him against her chest, his brown hair flopping against her.

His eyes are closed now, at least. She'd done it herself.

He can sleep.

He shouldn't be.

But he can. Or maybe…maybe…

She feels her heart surge, just a small kernel of hope exploding within her and she leans in and kisses him on the forehead, whispering his name as she tries to coax warmth back into his cold skin. She leaves her lips there for several long seconds, wondering if she has enough magic to bring him back.

She doesn't apparently and this is enough to steal the air from her lungs.

She's crying when the magic swirls around her.

 

 

* * *

She's crying when she appears on the _Jolly Roger,_ too.

It only when she finally collapses into a restless sleep that the tears stop.

But then she dreams.

She dreams of a boy with messy orange hair and a smile that would light up any room if it weren't so malicious and cold.

He thanks her and tells her that Henry's sacrifice won't be forgotten. He tells her that he's strong now, better than he's been in a long time.

All because of Henry.

She tells him that she will come for him eventually. She says that she's bad at promises sometimes, but this one he can count on.

However long it takes, whatever it takes; he will pay for this.

He assures her that he'll be waiting for both of them.

Assuming he chuckles, that the Queen lets her live.

"You better hope she doesn't," Emma retorts as the dream begins to fade away. The last thing she sees of him – of Peter Pan – is his glowing eyes.

She's pretty damned sure that she'll remember those eyes for the rest of her life. However long or short that be. And if it's long, she promises herself that she'll remember them until she finds Pan and yanks them from him.

It's this very thought – the sheer violence and horror of it – that brings her to her waking senses with a loud sob and Henry's name on her lips.

She feels arms around her, then. She feels her mother's body against her, and then all of the anger is just bleeding into hurt and she begins to cry again. "Mom," she whimpers because even though she's only had this woman as her mother for about a year now, she needs this connection right now more than she ever has. "Mom, I lost him. I lost him. I lost him."

Snow doesn't say that it will all be okay. Because it won't be.

Because Henry is dead and Regina is so goddamned broken.

And Emma's pretty sure that she is, too.

Because Henry is wrapped up in blankets in one of the crew quarters, his body magically bound from decay thanks to a somber Rumple.

And the woman who had raised him and loved him so very deeply is in a bed across the room, an ugly bruise blooming on her jaw, and sweat glistening on her brow as whatever illness had been encroaching on her earlier in the day presents itself with a cold and uncaring vengeance.

Vengeance.

Regina had offered up her life to break the cycle of it.

They'd saved Regina because it'd been the right thing to do.

Emma has no idea what right and wrong means anymore. She feels such anger inside of herself, but the sadness overwhelms that. Part of her wants to get up and walk over to Regina's bed and strangle her in her sleep, but the other part is ridiculously thankful that she's not in this alone.

Even if her companion in devastating loss is the Evil Fucking Queen.

Slowly, her tears dry up and then she's hiccupping and gasping. And scraping for anything that feels like something she can grab onto.

Any kind of life support.

Right now, it's her mother.

She hears Regina whimper in pain even as she herself curls against her mother's warm protective body.

She hears Regina cry out for their son.

"I won't let her hurt you," Snow assures her as she follows Emma's gaze over towards the fitfully sleeping former queen.

"She won't," Emma says as she lifts her head up to look at Regina's shaking body, and it's weird how suddenly very certain she is of this.

"Emma…"

"She won't. She doesn't realize yet because she's so angry and hurt and…" she stops for a moment, coming close to breaking again. Once she's forced composure on herself again, she continues with, "She's her own."

Snow startles at the implication, eyes terrified and wide. "You think –"

"He was her everything," Emma says softly. "Mine, too, but…he would want me to protect her from herself and for him…for him, I will."

"Okay," Snow says as she leans in and presses a kiss to her temple.

She drops her head back against Snow, then. So very young and lost.

"Don't leave me."

"I wasn't planning on it. Do you want to talk –"

"Not tonight. I just want to…I don't want to feel anything." She doesn't say that she's not completely sure that she'll ever be able to speak of this.

"I'm not sure that's possible. For either of you."

Emma's face screws up for a moment, and she thinks maybe another crying fit is about to hit, but then the exhaustion grabs her again and halts it.

"I just want to sleep," she says.

"Then close your eyes," Snow urges. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Emma's eyelids flutter. "If she wakes up…"

"She won't. Not for a few hours, anyway. Gold put her under a light sleeping spell or something like that. Just something to help her rest."

"She doesn't look like she's resting very well," Emma murmurs, but then her eyes are closing again and her breathing is slowing down once more.

"No," Snow agrees, her hand rubbing circles on Emma's back.

It's only when Snow is sure that Emma is sleeping and Regina is as well that she allows herself to feel the pain and loss of Henry's death.

It's only then that she allows her own tears to come.

**TBC…**

 


	3. Bargaining

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Nothing big here. Mild language, some violence and a couple emotional flame-outs. References 2x08 Into The Deep and some creative license taken for Regina and Henry's history together.

 

  
_It's a cold day in a cruel world_   
_I really wished I could have saved you_   
_Then who would save me from myself?_   
_Right now, well, I could use a stiff drink_   
_To kill the pain that's deep inside my bones_   
**Ballad For Dead Friends/Dashboard Prophets**

*** ***

BARGAINING

*** ***

_He’s a strangely natural fit in her arms, and she’s sure that she’s never held something quite as perfect. He’s so small and delicate and beautiful, and she can’t take her eyes off his tiny perfection. He’s her son now, she realizes and it’s this terrifying thought that makes her jerk her head up just in time to see Mr. Gold making his way towards her front door._

_“Wait! Where are you going? Are you leaving me –“_

_“Alone with you new son?” he asks in a tone that reminds her uncomfortably of the man he’d once been. “Indeed I am. Contrary to your beliefs, Madam Mayor, I do run a business that doesn’t involve your needs.”_

_“What am I supposed to do with him?”_

_“That’s not really my problem, now is it, dearie? You asked me to find you a child and I have. He’s your boy now; I suggest you try to love him.”_

_“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”_

_“Far be it from me to point out the obvious, but well, benevolent emotion is not something you do especially well. Perhaps, this was a mistake. Perhaps, we should have started you off with something simple like a goldfish?”_

_“Are you saying that I’m incapable of loving this child?”_

_“Not at all. I’m just wondering if you think that you are considering the way you’re holding him. I understand you’re supposed to bring him close to you, not keep him away from your body like he’s something that might bite.”_

_“And what do you know of raising children?”_

_“Not a thing,” he says with a strange sadness. “Never had one of my own.”_

_“Exactly. Our business here is concluded, Mr. Gold; you may go.”_

_“Quite right you are. But before I do, since I can assume this means that you’ll be keeping him, what do you plan on naming the boy?”_

_“Not that it’s any of your particular business, but his name is Henry.”_

 

*** ***

The first thing that she hears when she opens her eyes is the soft sound of beeps. Steady, oddly rhythmic.  Her vision clears and she sees white walls and a glass door and a curtain and…this is a hospital, she realizes with a start. And she’s in a bed, dressed in a gown and there’s a tube up her nose.

Well, more in it than up it, but it’s there just the same. It’s unsettling to feel oxygen being pushed into her like this; she’d only experienced it one other time – when Emma Swan had rescued her from Gold’s fire at City Hall.

She wonders vaguely if she’s just waking up from that now, if maybe all of the other half-formed thoughts and memories that are swimming through her confused brain are just fragments of dreams that she’d had while she’d been unconscious. Though she doesn’t yet know why, she feels her heart soar at even the idea of this. Strange because the last thing she recalls…

Well she’s not really sure, really.

Had she actually passed out after the fire?

No. No, she hadn’t. 

She blinks and looks around the room. She’s in the same room that David Nolan had spent twenty-eight years in, but there’s a curtain cutting off view of her, preventing anyone from just staring at her like she’s on display.

Which is great but that doesn’t answer why she’s here or how –

Her brain clicks and then clicks again as memories start to flood in and reality starts to stomp away the cobwebs and shadows that had descended.

What she initially sees is a memory of her first moments with Henry. How he’d looked up at her with such wonderfully bright eyes. How she’d held his hand and squeezed it and he’d squeezed back and she’d been head over quite literal heels in love with him for no other reason than because he’d been perfect. 

But then the memory is fading and others of him are forcing their way forward. Some wonderful and some horrible.

One terrible one in particular.

He’s tied to a tree and his neck… 

No. No. No.

This can’t be…it has to be a nightmare.

It has to be.

But it’s not because her jaw aches just enough to remind her that Emma Swan had knocked her unconscious a few minutes after they’d found Henry.

After she’d declared her intention to hurt down and massacre those responsible for what had happened…for Henry’s…for his death.

It’s real, she realizes with a sharp gasp.

It’s real and he’s dead and…oh God.

She puts a hand over her mouth, but she needn’t bother because suddenly everything is just bubbling back to the surface and she lets out a scream that even the people back in the Enchanted Forest should be able to hear.

 

*** ***

_There aren’t enough books for all of this. There isn’t enough knowledge in the world to help her not screw this up. It’s two in the morning and he’s finally asleep and she has tears running down her face because she’s an absolute disaster at this and good God what had she been thinking?_

_She can’t do this._

_He’s too small and too fragile and she’s the Evil Queen and what right does she have to try to show a child the good in the world when she herself is still looking for it with wide eyes and greedy hands?_

_The books say do this and do that and she’s trying all of this things but sometimes he looks at her like he can tell that she’s just faking it._

_And he’s only three months old._

_What will he think of her when his eyes really open? Will he see her as the monster that she actually is? Will he reject her as everyone else has?_

_No, she tells herself, this is all worrying over nothing._

_He will love her because she loves him._

_That will be enough for both of them._

_She looks over at the crib, over his peacefully sleeping body._

_She swears that she will do right by him. Swears that he will never know a day where he isn't happy and loved._

_She swears that he will never want for a moment of affection._

_Whatever else happens, he will be loved._

 

*** ***

“You're awake,” a quiet voice says from across the room.

“So it would seem,” Regina answers dully without looking over towards the now open glass door. Whale and his nurses have been coming in and out of the room for the last hour, and though she’s made it quite clear that she wants for them to either all die or simply go away, they continue to return.

And not let her leave.

Not that she hadn’t already tried to get up and walk out on her own, but apparently, she’s been almost grievously ill for the last week, and her body just isn’t in the mood to cooperate. Two steps away from her bed had been too much and the only thing that had prevented her from a humiliating fall towards Whale’s feet had been the surprisingly strong hand of the fairy named Nova as it had settled over her forearm and held her upright.

“Your Majesty,” the shy fairy had suggested with an awkward shrug of her shoulders. “Perhaps you should stay down for a bit longer.” 

“Perhaps,” Regina had said, not because she actually did agree, but because the idea of collapsing in front of Whale had been unimaginable to her.

Even in her emotionally numbed out state, her pride refuses to allow a man who had assisted in her downfall to see her weakened and broken.

Now, propped up against several overstuffed pillows, her eyes on the far wall of the room, all she wishes for is the nothingness of unconsciousness.

Instead, she gets Emma Swan.

“How did we get home?” Regina asks after a moment, not that she actually cares. The particulars of how they’d gotten back to Storybrooke are of little importance to her; nothing beyond the memory that has scratched a hole through the middle of her already badly damaged heart means anything.

“Hook traded for a bean. Apparently the last one isn’t really the last one.”

“It rarely is,” Regina replies, more automatic than anything else.

“Yeah,” Emma replies, shoving her hands into her pockets. Regina’s eyes flicker over towards the younger woman for a moment and she takes in the deep exhaustion dug into every line of her face. Emma looks sad and pathetic, and if Regina could feel pain for anyone but herself, she thinks she might for this woman because she thinks that maybe Emma understands.

Maybe…

But no.

Because biology aside, Henry hadn’t been Emma Swan’s son.

Henry had been hers.

 _Hers_.

And if Emma Swan had never come to town, none of this would have ever happened. And why couldn’t she have just left well enough alone?

It’s a somewhat ridiculous question considering the fact that Emma had asked it – screamed it at - her it just a year prior. Right after she’d nearly fatally poisoned Henry with a turnover meant for his birth mother. She might laugh if there was any humor – bitter or otherwise – left within her.

“Why are you here?” Regina finally asks, her voice flat and tired. She imagines that there are drugs pumping through her veins because she feels so very numb and emotionless and that’s just a thousand kinds of wrong.

Because Henry is dead and certainly she’s angry and vengeful and…

And someone has to pay.

Someone _has_ to.

Someone will, the darkest part of her assures her. Someone _will_.

But right now, all she can think about is closing her eyes and sleeping until she can find a way to wake back up and have this nightmare be over.

“I guess I just wanted to make sure you were…okay,” Emma mumbles. The sheriff shifts herself anxiously, looking like she can’t seem to make her body cooperate with her. Somewhere in the back of Regina’s exhausted mind, she’s aware of the fact that she hasn’t seen this level of nervous anxiety from Emma since almost the first day that they’d met over a year prior. 

“I’m not okay, Miss Swan,” Regina snaps back. “I’ll never be okay again.”

“I know.” Emma blinks rapidly, like she’s trying to push back tears.

“Then what possible reason could you have to be here?” Regina demands.

“I’m here because…because Henry would have wanted me to be here for you,” Emma says softly. “He would have wanted both of us to –“

“Don’t you _dare_ speak to me about what he would have wanted,” Regina growls out, and she finds herself both relieved – and oddly a bit horrified - to feel anger winding its way through her body. “You don’t know and no matter what you tell yourself, Miss Swan, you never actually knew my child.”

Emma swallows. “Maybe not,” she admits and her face contorts horribly for a moment – long enough for Regina to be sure that Emma’s about to start crying – before neutralizing into something that just looks broken again. “But I know he loved you and…and I believe he loved me, too. And…” 

She trails off, shaking her head. Her hand lifts to her eyes and balls for a moment so as to scrub moisture away from her eyes. It’s more than a little unsettling to see Emma so emotionally exposed; this is a woman who’d come into town with a shrug and a wall high enough to keep out almost everyone, but right now, she’s crumbling and can’t hide that fact.

But Regina just glares coldly back at her and the more pain she sees written across Emma’s features, the more the anger sparks within her because what right does this woman have to be collapsing right now? 

What right does she have to be bleeding out like she is?

She doesn’t, Regina tells herself. She has no right to this pain. None.

“I’m sorry,” Emma whispers.

“Go away,” Regina replies. “I don’t want you here, and I don’t want whatever you think…I don’t want _anything_  at all from you.”

Emma nods her head slowly, robotically. Then, in a voice that’s almost inaudible, “His funeral is tomorrow. Eleven. If you want, I can –“

“You can’t. I’ll find my own way there.”

“Right.” Emma turns and heads towards the door. She stops, a hand settled on the cool glass, but doesn’t face Regina when she says in a shaky tone, “If I’d known this would happen, if I’d know…I never would have stayed.”

She doesn’t wait for a reply, just walks through the door.

 

*** ***

_“Henry!”_

_Regina snaps around, her dark eyes wide with fear. She’s standing in the middle of her kitchen, every muscle in her body rigid and tense._

_Because her not even yet a year old son is missing._

_“Henry!” she screams out again. Absently, she knows that this is crazy because he’s not speaking yet – nothing more than grunts that sound like gibberish and the word “momma”. Which warms her insides when she thinks about it, but right now, even that does little to cool her fear._

_She turns around in her kitchen, eyes jumping around. Her hands are clenching and unclenching as absolute terror surges through her._

_She wonders if one of her enemies – maybe Rumple - could have woken up from the curse somehow, and if he had, had he come for Henry. Had he –_

_She hears a soft sound. It sounds like a giggle._

_And not like one of Rumple’s._

_Her brow wrinkling in confusion, she follows the sound towards the hallway and then towards the stairs and that’s when she sees him._

_As of yesterday, he’d been a squirming rolling bundle of baby boy and now…well now he’s rapidly army crawling his way across her downstairs._

_“Henry,” she sighs, her hand settling over her anxiously pounding heart._

_His head turns and he grins at her. “Momma.”_

_“You frightened me,” she scolds, but she’s smiling back at him. She kneels down next to him and pulls him into her arms, holding his body as close against her own as she can manage without suffocating him. She can feel his heart beating against hers. “Don’t do that again, okay?”_

_His only reply is another laugh. It’s one that she can’t help but answer._

 

*** ***

Whale doesn’t even bother to try to stop her from leaving the hospital come the next morning. He does offer up a almost frightened reminder that she’s still very weak and still quite ill, but she laughs at him.

“Good for you,” she sneers as she pulls on a heavy black coat. That she’d woken up to find fresh clean clothes next to her bed is something she doesn’t want to think too much about; it likely means that the sheriff had returned to bring them, but she doesn’t want to think about Emma. 

Not even a little bit.

Whale takes a nervous step back and away from her, a hand lifting up as if to protect himself. “I didn’t mean anything by that,” he insists.

“Didn’t you? Are you trying to tell me, Victor, that you actually care if I live or die?” She laughs harshly, the sound grating her throat.

“No,” he admits. “But Henry –“

“Shut up,” she hisses, stepping towards him, a hand stretched out towards his throat like she might try to strangle him. He must see the wildness in her dark eyes because he retreats more than a bit, backing up against the wall.

He opens his mouth to speak again then and it reminds her so very much of the helplessness that Emma had shown and dammit why can’t she stop thinking of that woman and why can’t everyone just stop talking? 

Why can’t everyone stop pretending like they give a damn how badly hurt she is?

They don’t care about her. They never have.

They never will.

Any of them.

And she’ll see this whole world burn down before she allows another one of them to throw Henry in her face again. Like they have the right to speak of him. Like they have the right to speak for him.

Her blood boiling – and yes, it feels good and pure, she tells herself, all the while ignoring the reality that it doesn't - she whirls around and in a blast of purple smoke, disappears from the hospital.

When she reappears – outside of her mansion – she collapses to the ground, the world spinning rapidly around her. Thinking that if she tries to move again, she’ll end up throwing up everything inside of her, she flops back over on her back, sobbing as she looks up at the gray sky.

 

*** ***

_“Momma, tell me a story,” four-year-old Henry requests of her as he looks up at her from his bed, his colorful blankets pulled up around his hips. He’s been mildly sick for the last few days, and he really should be sleeping, but she hasn’t the heart to deny him much. Certainly not this, anyway._

_“What kind of story, dear?” she asks him as she sits next to him, her hand weaving through his thick brown hair. It’s slightly damp and even without thinking about it, she spreads her fingers to work out a tangle she feels._

_“Something with dragons in it,” he says, falling back against her chest. He yawns and looks up at her with such trust in his sleepy green eyes. Such faith and belief in her ability to protect and love him._

_It’s almost breathtaking._

_“Dragons, hmm,” she chuckles with more than a hint of amusement in the sound. “I think that maybe I have just the story for you. Do you want to hear it?” Her eyebrow lifts up like she’s teasing him and he responds accordingly, his head jerking up and down rapidly, his excitement near to bursting. “All right,” she nods. “Well a long time ago in a far away kingdom…”_

_“Once upon a time,” he corrects with a smile._

_“Don’t interrupt,” she says, tickling his ribs._

_“Sorry. Go on.”_

_“Once upon a time –“ their eyes meet and he nods. “There was a Warrior Queen and there was a…you could say she was a dragon most of the time.”_

_“Was she green and scaly?”_

_“Oh, yes, sweetheart. Very scaly.”_

_“Cool.”_

_She chuckles and then begins to speak. It’s perhaps risky to allow for stories of the old world but his need for adventure reminds her of the girl that had once ridden as hard as possible across great green hills and she finds the words to her tale spinning from her lips with ease. It's a wild and swirling story that is half-truth and half-fantasy. Something that would have made Maleficent lose her sanity completely. Whatever there is left of it, anyway._

_But because he’s four and trusts his mother completely, it’s just a story._

_A wonderful perfect harmless story where his mom is the great vanquishing Savior and defeater of Evil and he doesn’t know just how many truths are buried deep beneath the colorful descriptions of victory and conquest._

_He doesn’t know the truth about the so-called Warrior Queen._

_And she prays he never will._

 

*** ***

It’s unbelievably wrong to her to be standing away from the funeral like she’s some kind of outsider. He’s her son and she should be up front.

Protecting him.

But she can just barely stand beneath her own weight and she’s in no mood for the looks she’s sure to get should she move closer. She’s a proud woman and she has no fear of these people, but she doesn’t want their sympathy.

They have no right to pity her loss while weeping for their own.

Mostly, though, she doesn’t want to see Emma’s eyes again.

She doesn’t want to bear witness to the broken and lost expression that she can now vividly recall seeing in Emma’s eyes because she doesn’t care.

After all, this is all Emma’s fault.

All she had to do was leave when she’d been told to.

All she’d had to do was let Regina die when she’d been asked to.

Had she done either of those things, Henry would still be alive.

So no, Regina doesn’t want to see the pain in Emma’s green eyes.

Because no, she doesn’t care.

She can hear crying from those gathered around Henry from where she stands, but the wretched sounds mean so little to her because hereyes are locked on the handsome casket. It’s so very small and so very terrible and she wants to destroy it and make her son stand up and walk over to her. If there was magic enough to do so, she thinks that she would.

Yes, he might end up as awful as Daniel had but he’d still be…

No, no he wouldn’t be anything and if she’d loved Daniel (and she had loved him so very much that sometimes it still hurts to even think of him), her feelings for Henry are somewhere well beyond that. 

She’s not a selfless woman and the dark emotions in her heart right now are wicked and cruel but the one thing she will not allow is for her baby to be a monster.

He’s never going to be hurt again.

She hears motion and sees people moving back and away from the casket.

The funeral is over.

And life goes on.

Only it doesn’t.

Not for her.

Because Henry was her life. 

“Regina,” she hears and her eyes jump up to meet Snow’s. “You should have come over,” the girl says, so earnest and honest. 

“Why? We’re not family,” Regina replies. 

“We are,” David insists, coming to stand next to his wife. Emma is still by the casket, her hand settled atop the wood, an expression of utter shock on her pale features. Her eyes are jumping wildly from side to side, like she can’t quite believe this is happening. Like she’s sure that it’s not.

Regina keeps on ignoring her.

Or at least she pretends to.

“It’s funny how quickly and effortlessly you use that term,” Regina snaps back. “I’m family when you want to be the big compassionate hero, but when you want to be the King, dear, it’s awfully simple to want me dead or imprisoned, isn’t it?”

David opens his mouth to answer, but Snow silences him with a light hand on his forearm. “We’re not going to do this here,” she says. 

“That’s what you’re wrong; we’re not going to do this at all,” Regina snaps back. “Because our business with each other is finally over, Snow. You want to go back to your precious Enchanted Forest with your perfect little family and pretend like your lives are wonderful and blessed? Well go ahead and do it. I don’t care what you do anymore. You’ve won and it’s over.”

“You think this is winning? You think that’s what this is about?” Snow demands, sounding nearly hysterical. “He was my grandson, Regina.” 

“And you will have others,” Regina retorts, her eyes flickering back to Emma. “You’ll marry your little girl off or you’ll have more children. Either way, you’ll have another grandchild and Henry will just be…part of a story.”

“That’s not fair,” David insists. “We loved him, too.”

“How easy it is for you,” the former queen sighs with a shake of her head. “You love because you breathe. And you never have to fight for it or for what it means. You know that you will always find your way back to each other and things will always work out for you. You’ll always win and I will always lose...everything.”

“This isn’t winning, Regina” Snow says once again, shaking her head in quiet almost frantic desperation. “This is loss. This is…this is grief.”

“You don’t know the meaning of the word,” Regina replies.

“But she does,” Snow says, looking over towards Emma. “And she’s hurting right now, too so maybe –“ 

The former queen doesn’t give her the chance to finish – won’t let her place Emma beside her in their pain. Instead, she brushes roughly past Snow and David, making her way towards the casket.

Towards Henry.

She stands next to Emma, but continues to sharply ignore the devastated and shell-shocked expression on the girl’s face.

The one that seems to be promising an oncoming emotional meltdown.

It’s not her problem.

She’s Snow and David’s perfect little girl; they can take care of her and heal her with promises of good always winning and love conquering all.

They can lie to her.

Regina presses a hand against the wood and closes her eyes.

“Henry,” she whispers.

But she doesn’t cry again.

Not until everyone – including Emma who had been practically walked away from the casket by her parents - has left and she’s alone with Henry. 

She’s never wanted to be alone, never wanted the pain of solitude.

Not until right now.

When all she wants is her little boy.

When all she wants to do is cry for and with him.

 

*** ***

_“Mom! Mom, help!"_

_She’s in the kitchen making dinner when his pained cry rings through the house. The front door slams behind him and then her seven-year-old son is rushing in, covered in mud and the knee of his left pant-leg soaked in blood._

_She almost has a heart attack on the spot._

_Her mind cycles rapidly and furiously through every bit of reading that she’s done on childhood injuries. She tries to tell herself that this is probably nothing serious, but then he’s looking up at her with big tear-filled eyes._

_“What happened?” she demands, and her voice is harder than she intends it to be because she’s suddenly so damned scared._

_He flinches away from the tone, and scolding herself inwardly, she desperately wants to reach for him and apologize but then there’s blood dripping onto the floor and she feels the fear curl and attack within her gut._

_“Henry,” she says again, steel in her tone. “What happened?”_

_“I fell,” he says, head down. “I’m sorry.”_

_“Fell from what?”_

_He opens his mouth and she knows instinctively that he’s about to lie to her – which just makes her feel that much worse because why should he need to – but then he says, “From the tree.” He gestures out the window, towards her apple tree, which really isn’t strong enough for a boy to be climbing._

_As is evidenced by his bloody pants and his muddy shirt._

_“Can you lift your leg up?” she asks. He nods and does so, pulling his pants up to reveal what looks like a long but not deep gash. It’s bleeding a lot, but it seems to be mostly superficial in nature. “What were you thinking?” she prompts as she starts to clean it, perhaps more roughly than is needed._

_She’s still frustrated and scared and she’s letting him know it._

_“It looked like fun,” he tells her. “Didn’t you ever want to do something fun?” It’s a completely childish question, the type kids ask their parents because they don’t seem to understand that their mom and dad were once their age, too. It should irritate her because it’s somewhat manipulative, but it doesn’t because he’s right; when she’d been his age, she’d been trying to sneak away from her mother as often as possible so as to get as dirty as she could. She’d been the kid looking for fun and adventure and…_

_Well that hadn’t really worked out well for her._

_But Henry isn’t her and she’s not her mother and well, it’s just a cut._

_“You frightened me,” she tells him in a low slightly shaking voice, and it occurs to her just often she says this to him and how bad a mother it probably makes her to be as constantly afraid for him as she is._

_“I know,” he says and his expression shows that he actually means what he’s saying right now. And he does so because she knows that he sees himself – thanks to words from Graham – as the man of the house. He believes that his job is to protect her and her look says he hadn’t done that. “I’m sorry.”_

_“I know you are,” she leans down and presses a kiss to his now cleaned and bandaged knee – he hadn’t even noticed that she’d been doing it and perhaps she hadn’t really, either – and then smiles, “And I believe you.”_

_He grins in response._

_“But you have to make me a deal, okay?” she presses, leaning back up to meet her sparkling green eyes with her much more serious brown ones._

_“What kind of deal?”_

_“The kind where you promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t know what…”_

_“I’ll be careful,” Henry says, effectively cutting her off. “I promise.”_

_She closes her eyes and exhales. Opening them again after a long emotional beat that he doesn’t recognize for what it is, she says, “Then go change out of those dirty clothes and wash your hands; dinner is almost ready.”_

 

*** ***

Her mood melancholy and morose, Regina is almost completely drunk when she hears the loud uneven hammering at the front door of her mansion.

Frankly, it could be a light tap and it’d still be annoying to her.

Rising from her couch awkwardly, a glass tumbler clutched tightly in her hand, she makes her way to the door and yanks it open. And then she laughs, the sound high and cruel. “I should have known you’d show up.”

And really, she should have expected this, yes. It’s absurd the idea of Emma Swan coming to see her when she has her parents willing to coddle and cuddle her through this heartbreak, but oddly, it feels a bit natural, too.

“Because you know me so well,” the blonde retorts, her hand still lifted up as if to knock. She, too, is clearly drunk out of her mind. Though judging by the tear tracks on her face, her emotional state is closer to hurt than anger.

“I know you well enough to know that you can’t just do the right thing and just go the hell away. Which is why we’re both here now,” Regina replies, her lip curling up into a disgusted sneer. “And why my son is not.” 

“The right thing?” Emma shoots back. “The right thing? That’s all I’ve ever tried to do. I was trying to do right by him and by parents and by you.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to cry for you? Is that why you’re here on my doorstep? So you can share my pain just like you shared my son?” 

She sees the snap in Emma’s eyes almost before she feels it; something dark and horrible passes through her wide green eyes and then Emma is shoving forward with both of her hands and violently slamming Regina against the wall opposite the door. Regina hits it with a loud pained gasp, wincing.

“He was my fucking son, too, Regina!” she growls, her hands clutching the shoulders of Regina’s shirt and yanking upwards with enough force to tear the fabric."Mine, too!"

And now it’s Regina’s turn to lose control. “He wasn’t,” she screams back, her glowing hands surging out to magically throw Emma backwards, thereby putting a few feet of space between the two of them. “You gave him up and I took him in. I chose to love him and you stole that from me.”

“I tried to give it back,” Emma says, and then she’s suddenly sagging to the floor, all of the strength in her legs giving away like they’re made of Jello. "I offered him...anything. Everything."

The sudden change in Emma is enough to rob Regina of almost all of her fury. Instead, she feels confusion and perhaps even a bit of fear. 

“What?" 

“I went to Gold. I tried…I begged him.” Emma shakes her head.

“Begged him for what?” Regina demands, though even through her drunken haze, she has a pretty good idea of what Emma had asked for.

It’s the same thing she would have asked if she hadn’t known better. The same thing that she had once asked Rumple for in regards to Daniel.

“To bring Henry back. To help me turn back time. To make it so I’d never come to town, so he’d never found me.” She looks up at Regina, shiny tears racing down her ashen cheeks. She’s shaking in a way that Regina has never seen before, completely crumbling in front of the former queen. "I wanted everything to go back to what it was."

“You’d give up what you’ve found? You’d give up your parents?” Regina asks, tilting her head. “You’d let me have my curse back?” It’s another absurd question because Regina herself doesn’t give a damn about the curse anymore, but the need to understand Emma right now is strong.

The need to know if this woman is hurting as much as she is right now propels her forward and makes her move towards Emma.

The blonde laughs humorlessly but it sounds almost like she’s choking. “I’d give up anything if it meant…” a sob interrupts her words.

“But that’s not how it works,” Regina says softly. “Because dead is dead and there’s not such thing as time travel. We can jump worlds but not time.”

“There has to be a way. There has to be.”

“There isn’t,” Regina says dully. “And if there were, don’t you think I would have tried it? Don’t you think I would give up anything, too?”

“Yes, I know you would,” Emma tells her. “But this is my fault and…and there has to be something I can do.”

“There’s not. He’s dead, Emma. He’s dead and there’s absolutely nothing that either of us can do about it.” She has to close her eyes after she says the words because they’re not cathartic, they’re just soul-shattering.

When she opens her eyes again, she’s treated to the horrific visual that is Emma’s face screwing up into a mask of unbearable pain as the bitter reality of her helplessness crashes over her. I’m sorry,” she gasps. And then there’s just nothing left inside of her to hold her up. She crashes to the ground, wrapped in a tight little ball, sobbing desperately into her own arms. Over and over, she keeps saying something that sounds a whole lot like, "I'm so sorry."

Regina Mills has witnessed and experienced a lot of horrific things in her life; she’s been through nightmares that are beyond the vivid imaginations of most people. She’s even caused more than a few of them.  

She knows beyond a doubt that seeing her son’s body is beyond all of those nightmares. She knows that it’s something that she will never ever get over and she knows that the memory of it will haunt her for the rest of her life.

She thinks that maybe what she’s seeing right now will as well.

The woman in front of her is broken. Perhaps as badly as she is.

And though she should be, she’s not the least bit happy about it.

She doesn’t feel that old surge of vengeful victory. She doesn’t feel the vicious curl of fury that had always chased away when the pain.

She just feels…heartbroken.

She takes an unsteady step forward and then another. If she could see herself – if she would look up in the mirror and see what she’s doing – she’d probably stop herself because the idea of comforting Emma is absurd.

Because Emma had been right: this is her fault.

Only that’s not quite the truth at all, and deep down, Regina knows it. Deep down, she knows that the fault for all of this rests with her and her alone.

Part of her mind hisses at her to remember whom it had been who had lied to her so many times now. Lied about not being someone that Regina had to worry about. Lied about having faith in her. Lied about leaving her to die so that their son could be protected. And then lied about him being alive.

So many lies and yet none of them actually matter anymore.

Awkwardly, and without even a hint of grace, Regina drops down to her knees next to Emma, the wood hard and rough but completely unnoticed. Her hand reaches out for Emma’s shoulder and she just wants her to stop making that awful sound because it’s not making anything better.

And she doesn’t want this pain.

She doesn’t want anyone to feel it anymore.

She wonders absently if this is truly Henry’s gift to her – that he’d lightened her darkened heart without her realizing it. That he’d altered her soul and made her not desire the devastation and pain of others as she once had.

Or perhaps this is about knowing that the woman who she’s now touching understands her grief in a way that no one else ever can or will and she’s so very sick and tired of being alone in her pain and hurt.

“Emma,” she whispers. “Stop. Please.”

But Emma doesn’t; she can’t. And she keeps crying and shaking until her throat closes up and she’s simply whimpering and rocking herself. Until the exhaustion and heartbreak take her and her eyes flicker closed.

Regina would laugh if this situation weren’t so horrible.

She waves her hand around and purple smoke covers the Savior’s slumped body. She’s sure that Emma wouldn’t care for being moved by magic, but she’s equally certain that once you come to someone’s house completely plastered, you lose the right to dictate how they try to take care of you.

Gods, Regina realizes with a start, she’s actually taking care of her enemy.

It has to be the alcohol, she muses.

Because apparently being drunk causes Emma to collapse emotionally and alternately permits Regina to find the better person within herself.

She sighs and thinks of the child who she hopes would be proud of her.

Even if only for a few minutes.

Come morning and unfortunate sobriety, she imagines the rage and anger will be back, and she doubts that the better person that she’s being right now will be the one that finds its way to the surface.

She doubts that she will be pleased to find Emma sleeping in her house.

That’s for tomorrow, though.

For tonight, she uses what’s left of her magic and strength and transports Emma and herself up to one of the guest rooms. She covers the shattered Savior up with a warm blanket and then leaves the lights on to help try to chase away the nightmares that are sure to be coming.

 

*** ***

_“Mom?” he says, looking across the room at her. She’s sleeping against the hard stone wall of Snow and Emma’s apartment – and has been for much of the time that she’s been watching over him._

_She stirs when she hears his voice, and immediately comes to, blinking away the exhaustion that’s written into her face._

_“Henry,” she replies with a too large smile. “Are you all right? Did you have another dream, dear? Were you hurt?” The words rush from her mouth, and as if she’s panicking herself, she’s up on her feet and across the room._

_“No,” he says. “I’m okay. Are you? You look like you have a kink."_

_She chuckles as if to hide her reaction, but he sees something strange sweep across her eyes, something that looks misty. “I’m fine,” she assures him. “All I care about is that you are.” She reaches for him – hesitates for a brief moment – and then settles her hand over his arm. “I never wanted for this to happen to you. I hope you…I hope you know that.”_

_“The dreams because of the turnover you mean. The one meant for Emma.”_

_She nods her head slowly, her lips pursing to stop herself from trying to justify her actions. After all, how can you even begin to explain trying to kill your son’s birth mother? Instead, she forces a thin smile and waits for him to continue because she knows her son well enough to know that he will._

_And of course, because like his birth mother, Henry can’t ever leave well enough alone, he pushes on with, “If Emma had eaten the turnover instead of me, what would have happened to her?” His head is cocked to the side and he’s looking at her like he’s trying to catch her in a lie._

_So she doesn’t even bother to try lying to him this time. “I don’t know,” Regina admits. “It was supposed to put her in an eternal sleep but…well it’s entirely possible that just as her kiss was enough for you…”_

_She trails off and looks away so that he can’t see the hurt in her eyes._

_The fear that if it were her instead of Emma who needed a kiss from Henry, it wouldn’t be enough to wake her because his feelings wouldn’t be._

_Not that she would ever put that kind of weight on him._

_“Do you want Emma back?” he asks her. It’s a preposterous question really because of course she doesn’t. And he must know that. He must know that she wants things to be as they were, before there was an Emma and before Henry was tied to Snow and David. Back when she was still his world._

_But that time has passed and that’s not what he wants to hear from her._

_That’s not what someone who is trying to be a better person admits to._

_“I want whatever you want,” she offers. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. So yes, I suppose I do want Emma back because it’s what you want.”_

_And that’s the truth, at least._

_His eyes meet hers and he nods. “I believe you,” he says._

_It’s not much but it still warms her heart because there was a time when she could have said the sky was blue and he would have called her a liar._

_Now he’s trusting her with helping to bring home the person he loves the most. It hurts terribly to even think – even admit – this, but maybe she becomes a little bit more worthy of him if she’s able to fight through this pain._

_Fight through it and do right by him even if she wants to do anything but._

_He deserves it and so for him, she’ll make any deal with the devil she must._

_Even if that means saving Emma Swan._

 

 


	4. Depression

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Sorry for the long delay on this. Here we go.
> 
> TW: Fallout from the death of a child, some violence, language and drinking and general depression.

 

_"That old dark cloud acts like he knows you_

_He takes up too much time, time you could be spending holding me_

_But he can't have you now, it's you and me here in this room"_

**-Kim Richey/Let The Sun Fall Down**

 

*** ***

DEPRESSION.

*** ***

She finds a bottle of painkillers hidden behind the toothpaste in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom; they're old and dated, from back when she'd hurt her ankle during the fire at City Hall, but she thinks nothing of this before palming a single white pill and then tossing it back into her mouth. She swallows it roughly, dryly, and nearly gags as it goes down her dry unwelcoming throat. It's only then that her desperately fatigued mind reminds her to wash the pill down with water.

And so she does; two quick gulps of water from a Dixie cup.

She thinks – hopes - the painkillers will help her sleep tonight.

Maybe they'll help her forget that just hours earlier, she'd buried her son.

As if anything really could, she thinks dully as she closes the mirror and steps out of the bathroom, her movements slow and sluggish. Even without the painkillers, she's completely exhausted both mentally and physically.

Doctor Whale had informed her when she'd woken up that she'd fallen seriously ill on the way home from Neverland (she remembers absolutely nothing after getting punched by Emma, and that she just barely recalls), and with each step she takes, she feels this sickly fatigue deep in her bones.

Right now, what she wants is her bed and her blankets. What she wants is for this day to be over, a memory forgotten and never to be remembered.

No, what she wants is for this day to never have happened at all.

She wants her son to be sleeping in his bedroom down the hall, his messy brown hair spilling over his forehead, his chin tucked against his chest.

What she desperately wants is for the drunken blonde woman in the other room to have listened to her and left Storybrooke with Henry once the damn trigger had been set off. If Emma had done simply that, if she had just for one minute stopped playing Savior, then Henry would still be alive.

If Emma had just walked away and never returned like she'd been asked to do, then it would all be over, and Regina would be the one relegated to being just a memory now. Only, that would be okay, she thinks bitterly.

That would be fair and right…

This never will be.

Her limbs unbearably heavy, Regina falls down onto her bed, and then rolls herself over so that she can stare up at the white ceiling. A spider crawls its way across, and any other time, she would have struck it dead, but now she simply stares stupidly at it, her dark eyes lazily tracking its every movement.

She thinks about the gods of this world. Here, many believe that there is some great being watching over people. Here, there is faith that loved ones continue to guide and guard even after they have shed their mortal coils.

She wonders if Henry would be willing to do that for her.

She wonders if after all the times that she's let him down and failed him – this time the worst of all of them – if he'd even be willing to protect her.

She feels her eyes fill with scalding hot tears and for once, she doesn't even bother to try to blink them away; she simply turns her face into her pillow and lets it hear, feel and muffle her increasingly loud hurt and heartbreak.

The painkillers don't take long after that to kick in; she's never been one much for anything stronger than aspirin and these are far more potent than that. The world shudders and blurs, and then, mercifully, it all fades away.

* * *

It's well after two in the afternoon the next day before Regina wakes up, and when she does finally sit up in her bed, sweaty and uncomfortable, she finds that her head is pounding like there's an entire third grade orchestra playing inside of her skull. She groans and places a palm flat against her forehead, wincing at the bright sunlight streaming through her windows.

And then she remembers why it is exactly that she has this headache.

As the visuals assault her, bright and terribly vivid, s presses her fist to her mouth, and wills herself not to throw up. Thankfully, she has nothing but acid in her belly, and after a few moments, the powerful urge that she has to vomit passes leaving her feeling merely dizzy.

She stands up slowly, wincing, and makes her way towards the window. She pulls the blinds closed, and then exhales in relief when darkness floods the bedroom and her eyes. She feels like she's hung over, and it's only then that she remembers that she'd mixed painkillers and alcohol together the previous night. Funny, she thinks; she hadn't even realized it at the time.

Or maybe, at the time, she simply hadn't cared about the incredible danger inherent in mixing drugs and liquor; she'd just wanted to sleep and forget.

And for twelve hours, she had. There'd just been the cold emptiness of overwhelming dreamless darkness and nothing else beyond that.

That should make her feel better, but right now, it just makes her think about a coffin six feet down in cold dirt. It makes her think about Henry.

There's the vomiting reflex again, this time stronger and more vicious.

This time, she's forced to rush to the bathroom so that she can dry heave into the toilet, her stomach rolling and clenching and violent seizing.

Once she falls back to the cold tile of the bathroom floor, she thinks to herself that perhaps she'd been stupidly lucky. She thinks that she could have hurt herself seriously; after all, she'd been quite ill and her immune system is compromised, and it probably wouldn't have taken much to…

She laughs almost shrilly, and the sound echoes harshly against the walls, and then ricochets back towards her, making her wince sharply.

The reality is, dying because of a chemical overdose would have been a humiliation indeed (not that she would have been aware of such), but it probably also would have also been a mercy because then she wouldn't be sprawled across the floor of her bathroom wishing that she were dead.

Wishing desperately that she could take her son's place in the ground.

Because he would be alive and she would be gone and then all of the pain and hurt would be all over, and everyone would just be…happier.

But that's not how this world or the other world or any world works.

She's a survivor even when she doesn't want to be.

This thought makes her think of another person who shares this unfortunate trait; the woman who'd come to her door stone cold drunk, and then shattered into a thousand pieces on the floor in the front of the staircase.

Emma Swan.

Just the memory of this woman and all the pain that she caused by staying in Storybrooke causes a hot flash of anger to coil its way through her insides, but just as it moves towards the middle of her, cold and dark, she pushes it away.

Because it just takes too much strength, and she's tired.

So very tired of fighting and feeling and hurting and…everything.

She doesn't want to feel anything. Not anymore. She just wants…

Well there's none of that left for her, anyway, so this emptiness will have to do.

With more effort than seems logical, she pushes herself up to her feet, and makes her way over to the sink. She turns the tap on, fills a cup with water and swishes it around in her mouth to clear the taste away. After spitting it out, she looks up at her reflection and sighs. The woman that she sees there isn't a Queen or a Mayor or even a Mother. Not anymore. She's nothing now.

She's just…broken.

But for once, she's not alone in this.

Emma's broken, too. Not that she wants to share this pain with her, but the woman is in her house, and needs to be dealt with. Henry would want that, and even now, with her heart so shattered and burnt, she acquiesces to him.

Wincing as her body protests every small or large movement that she makes right now, Regina exits her bathroom, and after a moment of pause, she leaves her bedroom, too. Ever so slowly, then, she makes her way down the long hallway towards the guest room, the sluggish nature of her arms and legs mixing with her increasingly terrible headache to make her want to throw up again. She won't, though, not until she's dealt with Emma first.

After that, well, she just might camp out on the bathroom floor.

She gets to the room and pushes the closed door open, brightly streaming sunlight from the open window immediately assaulting her sensitive eyes anew. She's about to say something – offer up some kind of sharp greeting (something to create distance between them) – but she stops short when she sees that the room is empty; apparently, as she's wont to do, Emma has already fled the house and the sure to be uncomfortable aftermath of the previous evening.

Regina frowns as she takes in the curious state of the room. Rather than having left her typical brand of chaos as she'd run away from having to deal with the woman that she'd had a meltdown in front of, Emma has, instead, actually tidied things completely up: the sheets have been pulled off the bed and left in a neat pile on the ground, and the blankets have been folded neatly atop the foot of it.

It's strange, and Regina thinks that if her mind wasn't so damned full of cotton and confusion and hurt, she imagines that it might actually mean something.

But then, the truth is that she doesn't actually care.

Because she's alone again.

With her grief and with her pain, and maybe that's how it's supposed to be.

Henry might have wanted his mothers to be there for each other, but was that ever truly realistic? They've never been more than enemies – allies only when necessity had dictated such – and it's absurd to think that they could come together now when everything is so raw and bloody and damaged.

And when the desire to blame and hurt and break is so very strong.

No, this is for the best.

For everyone.

Because right now, all Regina wants to do is let the world fade away into gray.

And so it does.

* * *

Ten days pass before the former queen is finally forced to leave her house during daylight hours in order to replenish her now completely bare cupboards; she's been existing on bland canned foods and whatever other tasteless scraps that she'd been able to locate around the house, but now there's little left to her besides a few bags of stale sunflower seeds and a small handful of over-ripe apples that she'd harvested from the maimed tree at City Hall during one of her restless midnight walkabouts. Her purpose when she'd grabbed the fruit had been to bring them home so as to make herself a fresh batch of cider, but they've not been touched or even looked at since she brought them back to the house.

They're too much of a reminder of the past and of who she was.

And why she's here all by herself in this house, and now, always will be.

All the same, this lack of proper food around the house means that Regina has no choice but to get dressed and head out into Storybrooke for a few hours. It takes her considerably longer than usual to get herself ready to face the world again; there'd been a time when such a routine – perfect makeup and hair and clothes - would have taken her very little effort at all because she'd had the process down to a science, but now everything feels dull and sluggish.

More than ever, this feels like going through the motions.

She supposes that that's because more than ever before in her sad lonely life, that's exactly what this is – doing what she's expected to do simply to do it. She does it because even though everything that matters inside of her feels numb and cold, she's still not yet ready to let the Grim Reaper have her.

Fighting is all she's ever done, and even when she doesn't want to continue doing it – even when she has no reason to do it anymore – she will simply because her body doesn't know how to not do it. She's aware that her heart has already checked out, but that's hardly an unfamiliar feeling for her.

So she dresses in a dark sweater and a gray pencil skirt and absurdly high black heels, and she makes her hair flip and flow like it's supposed to, and then she draws heavy lines around her eyes and lips. Not quite as bad as the Evil Queen, but perhaps a bit more severe than Mayor Mills. This look is meant to present her as unapproachable and distant; she has absolutely no desire to speak to anyone or to hear any kind of false condolences.

Thankfully, most of the people in this damned town won't even bother with that, anyway – they likely believe that she deserves the pain of this horrible loss – but out of respect for Henry, who had been loved by everyone, some will likely still feel an obligation towards polite feigned sympathy.

She doesn't want this and doesn't need it; they can save that nonsense for the woman whom they consider to have been Henry's real mother.

She waits for a surge of anger to come at this thought, but none does, and then she almost laughs because she wonders if this is what her mother had felt like once she'd removed her heart from her chest; no, Regina's heart hasn't been locked away safe and sound in a dark little box, but it might as well have been.

Right now, she feels nothing.

Staring blankly into one of her mirrors, she flips her hair one last time, ensures that her mask is perfect, and then heads out into the world again.

Regina is coming out of the store with a cart full of groceries – too many, she'll realize much to her annoyance once she's home (she'll also realize that she'd bought the kinds of food that only Henry used to eat out of pure instinct, and when she does notice this, she'll come as close to breaking down as she has since the day of his funeral) - when she sees Emma. The sheriff is leaning against the Mercedes, waiting for Regina with her arms crossed over her chest.

"Your Majesty," she drawls, an odd smirk lifting her lips. There's a strange loopy laziness to her eyes and facial muscles, and without even getting close enough to smell the sheriff, Regina can already guess that the blonde had been indulging in some liquid courage and strength to help get her through her clear pain.

"Miss Swan," Regina replies coolly. "Get off my car."

"Been awhile since anyone has seen you," Emma notes almost casually, refusing to move even an inch. Instead, she balls her hand into a fist and knocks on the metal, smiling when it earns a look of annoyance from Regina.

Regina's eyebrow lifts. "I'm pretty sure that you know where I can be found, dear. After all, you did drop by my house a few days back so that you could cry all over my floor. Or are we trying to forget that that occurred?"

The words are cruel and harsh, and Emma can't stop herself from flinching.

Instead of saying such, though, Emma forces a cold smile onto her face. "I remember that just fine, thank you. But that doesn't answer my question: what have you been doing while our son has been rotting in the ground?"

If she'd been expecting Regina to show the same physical reaction that she had to the Queen's caustic words, she's sorely disappointed when Regina just stares back at her, her dark eyes as unemotional and calm as still water.

"Catching up on my yard-work," Regina replies, sounding bored.

"Your yard-work? That's what you've been doing? Really?"

"Yes, really. It's time to harvest my apples, and I'm already quite behind in getting them picked before they rot and I have to just throw them out," Regina replies with a raised eyebrow. Do you have a problem with that?"

"I have a problem with  _you_ ," Emma replies as she stands up from the car.

"Yes, well, that's hardly new." She steps into Emma's space. "Though, I will say that the fact that you smell like liquor in the middle of what I presume is a work day, well that certainly is new. I take it that you're on the same bender that you were on the last time I saw you. Your parents must be so disappointed."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"No? Then tell me, why exactly did you seek me out? What have I done to you today to piss you off so badly that you craved a confrontation? That is what this is, isn't it, Sheriff? You picking a fight with me for the hell of it."

Emma shrugs her shoulders in a manner that's meant to be careless, but just looks bizarrely uncoordinated instead. "I'm here because I heard from some of our concerned citizens that you were moving about town again. And well, considering what you've done to all of them, it warranted a check-in."

"Their obnoxious concerns have never bothered you in the past."

"Oh, but they have," Emma assures her, her strange smirk growing into something vaguely mean and confrontational. "I just let you do your thing because that's what Henry always wanted. He wanted you free so that you could 'redeem' yourself, but you know what? Henry's dead so that doesn't matter."

"Is there a reason you feel the need to keep reminding me of this?" Regina queries, her eyes flickering around to take in the crowd of onlookers that is gathering near the door of the store; it's been awhile since the Queen and the Savior have gone head to head with each other, and considering what everyone knows about their shared grief, fireworks are certainly expected.

Emma shrugs again. "Just seems to me that you've forgotten." She looks down at the shopping cart, and then reaches out and picks up a plastic half-gallon of strawberry milk. "Living in denial are we, Your Majesty?"

"Hardly. The fact that I'm not acting like a sniveling child having a temper tantrum doesn't mean I'm not aware of what I've lost," Regina snaps back.

"That's rich coming from you," Emma laughs, the sound dry and harsh. "I mean considering your own tantrum led to us all being in this world."

"At least that was doing something, which is better than…this."

"Doing something. Okay. And now? Now what are you doing?"

Regina just stares back at her, unable to answer the question.

"Right. Thought so. So a stable boy was more important than the kid you wanted everyone to think was your son. Got it. But then, he was never yours, was he?" Her nostrils are flaring as she says this, and she's so very close to Regina.

"He was always more my son than yours," Regina replies softly, the words cruel but the tone so mild that if Emma wasn't already hurting, this wouldn't wound her at all. "But then that's what this is all about, isn't it? You're realizing that now that it's all over, and there's nothing left for either of us, at least I still have my memories of him. At least I still remember what it was like to hear him call me 'mother'."

She might as well have open-palm slapped Emma across the face because the pain of her sharp directed words clearly cut right through the alcohol soaked fog of the sheriff's mind, the agony apparent in her red-rimmed green eyes.

"You mean you have the memories of him wanting me to be his mother?" Emma chokes out, her face for a moment screwing up into something so very hurt and damaged and raw. Right now, she's every bit the child that Henry was. She's inebriated, and angry, and she wants everyone to feel the pain that she's in.

Especially Regina.

Unfortunately for her, the former queen isn't interested in playing along.

"I think we're quite done here," Regina replies, her eyes cold and still completely devoid of the emotion that Emma so desperately wants to see there. "You should really go see Dr. Hopper. Luckily for you, Miss Swan, he's standing over there with the other morons who appear to be quite enjoying the performance that you're putting on for them. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you; you clearly need him."

"And you're clearly the heartless bitch I always took you for."

"Perhaps, but at least I'm not a pathetic drunk intent on making an ass of herself all over town," Regina fires back before she turns and – her head held high - walks towards the door of her car. She gets in, snaps on the engine and then stares at Emma as if daring her to stay in the way. "Move," she growls.

For a moment, Emma just stares back at her, so much raw hurt and pain screaming out at her from those turbulent green eyes of her. Right now, the sheriff is holding absolutely nothing back, and it's disconcerting in so very many ways. The part of Regina that isn't numb and broken almost wants to reach out to her – for Henry – but she wouldn't even know where to begin.

Emma obviously needs help; the sheriff is rapidly falling apart for everyone to see, but that assistance can't possibly come from someone who is already broken down to such a degree that there's just nothing left inside of her.

It's almost funny in a not at all humorous kind of way; Regina muses as she stares out at Emma, how very differently grief is striking both of them right now. Emma is feeling too much of everything and well, Regina, she's feeling absolutely nothing at all, and both of them are falling apart because of it.

All because of one perfect little boy whose loss has left them both wrecked and completely unable to find any kind of solid ground to rest their feet against.

After several long moments of staring at each other, Emma finally swallows and then, looking completely humiliated, she slowly steps out of the way of the car, her head dropping down as everything seems to catch up to her, and she seems to realize what kind of show she's just put on for everyone in town to see.

* * *

She's only slightly surprised when Archie drops by the house about three days later, looking somewhat unsure about being there, but offering his usual smile and soft voice. "Regina," he greets when she opens the door. When she just continues to stare at him, he continues with, "I wanted to see how you're doing."

"How do you  _think_  I'm doing, Doctor?" she answers, her eyebrow up.

He chuckles humorlessly. "Actually, you appear to be holding up remarkably well considering…well, considering." He shuffles his feet, jams his hands into his pockets and then glances behind her as if to ask her if he can come inside.

"Oh, by all means," she sighs, stepping aside to allow him entrance. "Come in."

"Thank you," he replies, and then he slips inside and turns to face her, watching as she gently shuts the door behind him. He allows himself a moment to look her over, taking in her perfect makeup and hair, and her crisp professional clothing.

She's barely been seen around town for the last few weeks, and though that is calming for those who'd been fretting about her turbulent rage, he finds it worrisome that she's continuing to dress like she did when she was the Mayor. This feel like a protective shield, but what he sees in her eyes isn't the cold disdain that had once personified Regina, but rather indifference.

And for a woman who had lived and breathed Henry, that's almost startling.

"Of course," she replies politely. And then, because she has no real desire to speak of herself right now, she asks, "How  _is_  Miss Swan doing?"

"You want to talk about Emma?"

"Not particularly, no, but I assumed after what happened between she and I at the grocery store a few days ago that you would have swooped in to assist her." She snorts derisively. "Actually, I imagine that everyone did. She is the Savior."

"Does that bother you?" he queries. "That Emma has support and you don't?"

"Of course not. It's what Henry would want," she answers dully, like someone would repeat a slogan that they've heard and repeated a thousand times over.

"Her supported and not you?" Archie presses.

She sighs, and some of the dullness flickers away, but only just a bit of it; in his entire time of knowing this woman, Archie has never seen her this devoid of passion. "He was a good boy with an amazing heart, Dr. Hopper; I imagine that despite my failings, he would have wanted me to be…I don't know…"

"Happy?"

"We both know that's no longer possible."

"Because Henry's passed on?"

"Because he's dead," she corrects, her tone flat and once again void of anything remotely resembling emotion. "Henry  _was_  my  _only_  chance at a happy ending, Dr. Hopper, and now that he's gone…well, I've come to some understandings over the last few weeks, and I would think that they would assuage your fears."

"I'm not afraid of you, Regina," he says, his soft eyes meetings hers. She's surprised to see just how little fear he has of her. Not along ago, such a realization would have led to a show of power and force from her, but now…

"You are a fool, Bug," she sighs, though she seems more annoyed than angry.

"And you're extremely practiced at pushing people away, Regina, but here's the thing," he counters. "Before I screwed up and betrayed your trust, you talked to me for weeks, and I think I got to know and understand you pretty well." He shrugs his shoulders and offers her a smile. "Which means I know what  _this_  is."

She laughs, the sound uncomfortably hollow. "Oh, and what is this?"

"This is depression," Archie replies. "But then you already knew that, didn't you? You've been dealing with some kind of depression or another for a very long time, and what you're feeling now, well it's just a different shade of it, isn't it?"

"Remind me next time I cast a Dark Curse to give you a job as a bellhop."

He chuckles. Then, with another one of those understanding smiles that causes her skin to crawl in discomfort, he answers with, "I'm here for you, Regina. If you want to talk or if you don't and you just don't want to be alone, well I'm here."

"You should be focusing on Emma," Regina replies, waving her hand almost dismissively because it's funny to her the idea of someone caring if she's all alone now after so many years of being forgotten. "Because as you can quite plainly see with your own eyes, for once, someone is worse off than I am."

He nods his head thoughtfully. "You're right: she's not doing very well, but despite appearances to the contrary, Regina, I wouldn't say that you're actually doing all that much better than she is. She's externalizing her pain and loss and hurt, and you're internalizing it. I'm not sure that there's much difference in how either of you are handling this except in the rather drastically different ways of how you're choosing to display your anger and helplessness at the situation."

"Situation," she repeats. "You make it sound so trivial."

"That was absolutely not my intent, and I very much apologize if that's what you took from my words, but you still know what I mean, Regina. You're both walking this path together whether you realize it or not."

"That's where you're wrong, Dr. Hopper. You think I'm angry? I'm not. At all. I don't feel anger or rage or even hurt. I don't feel…anything. I feel…nothing."

"And when that changes?"

"Who's to say that it will? For forty years, I felt an all-consuming amount of rage and hatred towards Snow White, and now, even when I want to, I can't seem to manage to even muster up the smallest amount of anger or even hurt about my own son's death. Perhaps this is my punishment for the evil that I've done."

The simple so very easy way that she says this sends a chill through him that he can't manage to hide even though he valiantly tries to do just that. His own heart breaking, he replies with, "The heart doesn't work that way, Regina."

"I'm afraid you don't know my heart," she replies quietly. Her fingers settle gently atop the silky fabric of her expensive shirt and she thumps the tips against the softly beating organ for a moment before dropping her hand back to her side.

"Maybe not," he agrees. "But that doesn't change my offer to you."

"And what about Emma? Did you make the same offer to her?"

"Why do you care so much about what's being done for her?"

"Henry wouldn't want the mess she's making of herself." She finds herself just a little bit amazed at just how easy it's becoming for this sentiment to slip out these days. It's so cloyingly sentimental, and what does he care anymore, anyway?

But it doesn't matter if he can care anymore; it only matters that he would have.

"Nor would he want the one you're making of yourself," Archie replies, and then, before she can think of a way to reply to him – assuredly a way to protest his words - he nods his head and steps away. "If you need me, I'm just a call away."

He's gone a few moments later, the door closing quietly behind him.

She closes her eyes and tries to feel the pain of loneliness because even though she's always hated it, at least such emotion is familiar to her. She digs deep inside of her and tries to find the old corrosive feelings. Tries to find anything.

But there's just…emptiness.

She wonders if she'd prefer to feel like Emma does right now.

Spinning and furious, and bleeding out for everyone to see.

But then, she's already been that once.

And now there's just this.

* * *

It's less than a week later when everything starts to break down the middle.

Because apparently nothing – perhaps especially the former Evil Queen - in this horrible little town can ever be left alone to just fade away.

She's in her office, sitting behind her desk, her eyes locked on the bright orange flame that gently crackles in the fireplace. She sees it, of course, but not really.

This is like every other night that has passed since Henry's death.

Empty and existing simply to exist.

There's a hard hammering at the front door of the house and her just slightly alcohol dampened brain takes a few moments to register the annoying sound before she realizes that someone has come to see her at almost ten at night.

Which can really only mean that it's the one person she doesn't want to see.

Regina sighs loudly and gingerly pushes herself up, trying not to think about the last time that Emma Swan had come to the house. It'd been the night of the funeral, and the sheriff had ended up broken and sobbing on her floor.

She doesn't think she can handle that again.

She makes her way to the door and opens it, her eyebrow already arched in disapproval at which she expects to find: surely a very drunk Emma.

What she finds – much to her irritation - is Snow White instead. And though she doesn't actually feel the intense anger that she normally does whenever she sees this woman, her upper lip instinctually curls into a sneer. "Snow."

"I need your help," Snow whispers, her face a mask of distress.

"No."

"Regina, please," Snow pleads, her eyes wide and frightened.

"Why would I ever help you?" the former queen snaps. Then, before Snow can answer, Regina laughs. "But you're not here about you, are you? You're here about your precious daughter who you just can't seem to make better."

"She needs help," Snow confirms, bobbing her head forward.

"Then help her, Snow. It's not my job to make Emma feel better about this."

"I know –"

"No, you don't know, but guess what, dear, I'm going to go ahead and educate you. You came here because Emma is spinning out of control right now, and you're terrified that if you can't find a way to stop it, one day you'll be the one trying to figure out how to wake up every morning without your child."

"I already did that."

"No! No, you didn't," Regina corrects. "You never knew you didn't have her. And once you did, you had her back in your life. You have no idea what this is like."

"But you do," Snow admits. "And that means that you can help her."

"Perhaps it does, but here's the problem, dear; I don't want to."

"Why? It's what Henry would want."

Regina laughs, the sound chillingly cold but emotionless in a way that unsettles Snow far more than she might like to admit. "How very typical of you. He was  _my_  son, Snow. He was the only good thing in my life, but that doesn't mean a damned thing to you, does it? Because right now, his only value to you is as an emotional lever to pull so that you can try and manipulate me into helping you."

"That's not fair."

"I don't care if it is," Regina snaps. "And I don't care what happens to your precious little girl or your perfect little family so  _please_ , go away, Snow, and don't ever come back.  _Your_  child is your problem now. Not mine."

"I know you're lying, Regina; Archie told me that you were concerned for her."

She rolls her eyes. "The Bug didn't learn his lesson the last time, I see."

Snow shakes her head almost desperately. "No…he didn't – he refused to - tell me anything you talked about with him. He just said you asked about Emma."

"He's overstating things as always. I'm not concerned about Emma, I'm concerned about myself. Your daughter came after me in public. I merely wanted to ensure that that did not occur again because I still have basic needs to satisfy around town. Her drinking issues, however, are –"

"It's not about the drinking anymore," Snow interrupts, looking terrified in a way that Regina has never seen before. "She's not doing that anymore. After what happened at the store, we…we talked and we…we did an intervention on her."

"Oh, of course you did, and I'm sure it worked because hugs and kisses always work out for your family."

"You're not listening to me," Snow insists. "She's not drinking anymore, but she's also  _not_  getting any better."

"This isn't something you get better from, Snow," Regina spits out. "You  _never_  get better from it."

"I know. I…know." Snow shakes her head. "Look, she stopped drinking like she was, but for whatever reason, she's become completely obsessed with trying to find a way to get back to Neverland so that she can go after Pan and kill him. You know where that road leads, Regina. Better than anyone, you know."

"I do. And it's still  _your_  problem. So deal with it, and leave me the hell alone for once in your life."

And with that, she slams the door shut.

* * *

It's curiosity – and perhaps a kind of dark hope that perhaps Emma  _has_  found a way to Neverland and maybe such a quest will allow her to feel something again - that drives her to her former teacher's door the next morning. When she enters the shop, he almost seems surprised to see her for the briefest of moments.

"Your Majesty," he says softly, and she feels the slightest tickle of annoyance because the devious little bastard is actually looking at her with something that reads a whole like sympathy or pity, and she just doesn't want it from him.

"Save it," she growls. "I need an answer from you and then I'll be gone."

"Of course," he nods. "To what question, might I ask?"

"To the one Emma surely asked you. Is there a way back to Neverland?"

"Ah."

She grits her teeth and waits for anger to seep through her veins as it always does when he plays with her like this. It doesn't come, though, and after a moment, even the irritation slides away and becomes dull and gray.

Like everything else these days.

"What does that even mean?" she asks, and she knows she sounds so terribly tired.

So terribly and defeated, and it's enough to pull an answer from him.

"It means that I'm not surprised that you're here is all," he replies with a maddening smile of understanding. "I am, perhaps, a bit surprised that it took you so long as it did, but then I imagine you've been trying to talk yourself out of indulging in all of your old familiar self-destructive coping mechanisms."

"Because you're one to speak on emotionally healthy ways to handle the loss of a child," Regina snaps back. "Or need we go through our bloody history."

"No, no need for that, and for what it's worth, dearie, I've never said that I  _was_  an expert on handling loss. Anymore than you are, anyway." he replies.

"Enough of this," she snaps, more annoyed than angry. "The only reason I'm here is because I want to know if what Miss Swan is looking can even be done. Is there a way back to Neverland?" Her jaw clenches. "A way back to Pan."

"So it is vengeance again?" he asks, looking at her with such shrewd dark eyes.

"Answer the question: is it possible?"

"Theoretically, yes, but logically or any time soon, well no, I'm afraid not. As you well know, I spent over three hundred years trying to get to this world so that I could find my son. We needed beans to get to the other one so that you could find yours. Unfortunately for your blackened heart and the one becoming so inside of Miss Swan's chest, you burned the entire crop save the ones you harvested, and my understanding, dearie, is that the dwarves have yet to find a way to grow a replacement set. Once again, your impulsiveness ruined things."

She waves her hand dismissively at this; there's just no point in rehashing that poor choice because if she starts, she'll end up thinking about the torture and the mines and that goddamned tree. "What about magic? Can she use that?"

He smirks and shakes his head in the negative. "There's nothing that Emma Swan could use – prophesied child of True Love or otherwise – that could be stronger than the magic I had available to me, and I said, it took me years."

"And me," Regina reminds him. "It took you me. Could she do something like that? Cast some kind of curse that could change things?" For a brief moment, something that looks almost like a kind desperate hope gleams in her eyes as she considers just how much she would do to alter the course of things.

"Can't be done, but you already know that better than most. As much as it pains both of us – and it does - dead is dead, Regina. I told her that weeks ago."

"I know," Regina says quietly, remembering the night of Henry's funeral.

"As for if she could cast something that would help her return to Neverland, well I don't believe so. I don't think she has that kind of…evil within her. Not yet."

"And she won't ever."

He tilts his head, his dark eyes twinkling mischievously. "No?"

"No, because you're going to stay away from her."

"I didn't think you cared," he reminds her with a small smirk.

"I don't."

"But Henry would, right? And you'd do anything for him," he says, a hint of mockery in his tone. As always, he's pushing her buttons as hard as he can.

"Always a manipulation with you," she growls out. "But I suppose bastard that you are, you're not wrong. He loved her, and no, he wouldn't want this for her."

"And you? Did he love you, too? Would he want…this for you?" Gold queries, watching her carefully. There's a kind of twisted but still oddly genuine curiosity in his eyes. He'd lost Baelfire a second time thanks to this whole nightmare with Greg, Tamara and Pan, and though he seems resigned to this misery, he's also fascinated by the way his former protégé is handling her latest heartbreak.

"I was his mother," she replies simply, dully. "And just as it doesn't matter if Baelfire ever forgave you, I'm not sure if it matters if Henry ever loved me."

Gold nods his head. "Indeed," he answers softly. "So now what?"

"Now, you owe me," she reminds him.

"Do I?"

"You do. You brought us all here, all to this place just so that you could find the son that you let go, and this is where we are now. Just as broken and empty as we were before, and just as unable to change our fates as we ever were."

To his credit, he doesn't even bother to try to counter her words. Instead, he quietly asks, "And what do you imagine I owe you for…this?"

"Leave Emma alone. Leave her anger alone and leave her grief alone. Her heart might be darker than it was before this all started, but it still better than ours will ever be. She wasn't meant to be like us. She's not supposed to dream of bloody vengeance like I do or have the taste of madness in her mouth like you do."

"If she comes to me –"

"No," Regina cuts in sharply. "If she comes to you for anything at all, you send her away." She forces a cold smile across her lips. "For Baelfire if not for me." It's her way of turning around what everyone has been using to try to manipulate her for the last several weeks – what would Henry want – and though it's just as awful to do it to her old teacher, she finds that she just doesn't give a damn.

He considers her words for a moment, and then nods his head. "Very well."

"Then I think we're done here."

"Our debt is paid?" he queries and there's a strange emotion in his eyes – something that almost looks like sadness – but then it's gone again.

"Our debt can never be paid, Rumple, but there's also nothing you could ever give me that would balance our scales or make what's happened here any better so I suppose that this – for Henry and for Baelfire - will have to do," she answers before turning and leaving, the door to his shop slamming shut behind her.

* * *

It's two cold evenings later when she's woken up by her magic.

She's barely used it since Henry's death – she supposes that she should be at least somewhat proud of this newfound aversion to magic, but absent anyone to be proud of her, it's all rather meaningless to her – but she still needs the vibrant buzz of it as it furiously slithers through her bloodstream like a snake.

She sits up in her bed, blinking away the effects of the sleeping pills that she'd taken a few hours earlier; dreamless (nightmare-less) rest doesn't come at all easy to her these days, and so she finds herself having to knock herself out whenever she gets to the point where sleep becomes a biological imperative.

That she's been woken out of this drug-induced stupor by her magic puts her on alert because it means that someone or something is threatening her.

No, she realizes after a few moments of confusion, whatever has caused her magic to stir to live isn't directly threatening her; it's going after her hearts.

She doesn't think of them much these days. Perhaps, because her desire to control anyone is non-existent. That family vault hides so many dark secrets and deep agonies, and well, she figures that what she's going through is enough.

But if someone is there and touching what they don't understand, they could cause an almost obscene amount of damage without even intending to.

Part of her thinks that she should just let them. After all, what's the worst that they could do and even if they do the worst, so what? Then it might all be over.

But magic is never that easy nor is it that merciful.

She drags herself up, and with a surprisingly sharp snap of her fingers, dresses herself quickly into slacks, a dark sweater and a think black peacoat. She looks at herself in the mirror, and thinks about how much life has altered her and how little she resembles the girl that once fell in love with a sweet stable boy.

For as much as she desperately hopes that if there is an afterlife, Henry might be looking down on her and trying to protect her and guide her, she finds herself hoping just as feverishly that Daniel isn't aware of what she has become.

Another flash of magic through her veins pulls her from these thoughts. She knows that she'll return to them later – she always does these days thanks to so much time alone – but for now, she needs to find out who is in her vault.

She closes her eyes and visualizes her mother's casket.

And then she lets the purple smoke take her away.

* * *

She's not exactly sure what she'd been expecting to see when she'd reappeared next to Cora's coffin, but Emma Swan sitting on the dusty floor of the crypt with a pile of magic books around her isn't it. The first thing she notices, though, isn't the books but rather how wild Emma looks.

Her hair is uncombed and her clothes are messy, and it reminds Regina rather uncomfortably of the terribly dark and lonely days that had followed her interrupted execution. The ones when madness had truly stolen away her soul.

"Miss Swan," she snaps out, her voice cracking against the walls and rebounding back towards her. "What are you doing in my family vault besides disrespecting the dead?"

Emma looks up, eyes wide. "Regina," she says, grabbing at one of the books and pulling it into her lap, her knuckles white as she presses her fingers around it.

"Are you drunk again? Your mother had suggested you'd ceased making an ass of yourself."

"I did," Emma answers as she pushes herself to her feet. "I'm completely sober."

"Yes, I suppose you are," Regina allows. "But I'm guessing you haven't slept in a few days, have you?" She tilts her head, gazing back at exhausted green eyes.

"What do you care?"

"Everyone keeps asking me that question," Regina muses. "And I keep saying that I don't, but everyone seems to think that I should. How very strange."

"Right. So you don't give a damn about me anymore than I give a damn about you, but you're here because that's what Henry would want you to be doing because everything is about what he would want," Emma states, her tone biting.

"Ah, so you're sick of hearing and thinking that, too," Regina notes. "But no, I'm not here because of him; I'm here because you're touching things you don't understand, and if you keep doing it, you're liable to blow up this whole town."

"So you're here to help me?" Emma retorts. But then she laughs. "No, you're not are you? Because you already told Gold not to assist me. So…what is this?"

"Right now, it's getting you the hell out of my belongings."

"Pretty sure those hearts downstairs don't belong to you."

"Perhaps not, but the book you're holding does."

"And you can have it back once I find what I need it in."

"You won't."

"Because you won't help me?" Emma challenges.

"Because what you're looking for isn't in there. Don't you understand, you silly girl, it took me murdering my own father and destroying myself to get here. There are no more beans, and there are no other methods available; we can't go back."

"There has to be a way," Emma insists, looking like she's about to cry. And then, before Regina can stop her, she steps forward and grabs her by the collar of her sweater and tugs the former queen towards her so that they're close enough to taste each other's breath. "There has to be a way to make someone pay for what's happened here. Someone has to pay for a little boy dying. Someone  _has_  to."

"Oh, there is a way for that to happen if that's what you want," Regina confirms in a cold hiss of air. "You can kill me or I can kill you, and then someone will have paid for the loss of…for Henry's death, but it won't change a damned thing. He'll still be dead, and we'll still be what we are."

"Which is what, Regina? Because you don't look like you're anything these days."

"I see no reason to play this particular game with you again," Regina replies, her hands moving to cover Emma's so that she can pull away from the infuriated blonde. "So let me go, give me the book, Miss Swan, and let's be done with this."

"No," Emma replies, and then gives Regina a shake. "Fight me for it."

"Is that what you want to have happen here? You want us to have a little brawl for old time's sake right here and now? Would you like me to hurt you or do you want to hurt me?" She laughs coldly then. "Considering what happened in the parking lot, I'm guessing it's the latter. Well then, Savior, go ahead: hurt me."

"I…no. I…I just want you to feel  _something_."

"Why? Do you think that knowing I'm hurting, too, will make you feel better about feeling  _everything_?" Regina shakes her head. "Because let me tell you, my dear, it won't. Nothing will ever make you feel better about any of this." She tilts her head. "Well, except maybe having yourself another child to replace Henry."

She's actually expecting the reaction she gets; a violently hard shove against the wall and then Emma has her arm up against the former queen's throat. "I don't want another child," she growls out, digging her elbow into soft exposed flesh.

"But you can have one. I can't. You can start over and be happy again. I can't."

"I just want Henry back," Emma protests, tears leaking down her face. She looks so sad and lost and it's uncomfortable how not Emma like she is right now.

In fact, there's almost nothing of the typically resilient woman to be recognized.

"You think I don't?" Regina whispers, her shoulders sagging in defeat.

"I don't know what to think? Your fiancée dies, and you burn everything down around you and turn my life upside down, but Henry dies and…" She shakes her head and staggers away from Regina, falling against the casket. "And when Cora was killed, you tried to murder my mother. But now…now there's nothing."

"Because there's nothing left," Regina tells her, her face contorting for a moment into something that almost feels real before smoothing out. "And killing Pan – as justified as that would be - won't change that. Even after he's dead, I will still be all alone and that's all I will ever be. Henry was my only chance, and now he's gone so you'll excuse me if I find it hard to give a damn about anything anymore."

"But it'd still be doing something," Emma protests. "That's what you said."

"What?"

"When we were at the store. You said that going after my mother and casting the curse was still doing more than just…nothing. We should do more, Regina."

"Oh, Emma, no," Regina sighs. "It's over."

"I don't accept that."

"You don't have a choice. Give me the book and go home, and move on."

"Do you think that little of me?"

"On the contrary, I think that you still have a chance that I don't, and I am tired of…everything. I don't want to fight you or your mother or…I just don't."

"What about Henry?"

"What about him?"

"Don't we owe him more than this?"

"This is a debt that we can't repay." She laughs dryly. "Most of mine are."

"I don't want another child," Emma whispers.

"That doesn't change the fact that you can have one."

"So this is how it goes? You go back to your mansion and disappear and I'm supposed to just swallow everything down and move on like it doesn't matter?"

"You should be relieved," Regina counters as she leans forward and puts her hand around the book of magic Emma's still holding. "I told you that I was going to kill you for lying to me, and now I'm telling you that you have nothing to fear from me anymore." She pulls the book away from Emma and then places it on the casket. "Vengeance takes so much anger, Emma. I'm all out of anger."

"I need to do something," Emma protests. "I'm…I'm the Savior, right?"

"No, you're not. And there's nothing more to save. Go home; your parents are probably terrified, and I really don't want to see your mother at my door again."

"This is not us, Regina," Emma protests. "Talking instead of fighting."

"I believe that's because what we're doing is actually called surrendering, dear," Regina corrects. "And I'm pretty sure neither one of us is who we were before."

"I miss him."

"You didn't know him," Regina replies, but there's no cruelty in her voice, just that same emptiness that explains how she could be having this conversation.

"No," Emma admits. "I didn't. Not like you did. But I still miss him."

"I know."

"At least you have eleven years of memories," Emma says softly, reminding her of words that Regina had thrown at her in the parking lot of the store. "And pictures. You have so many pictures. I have nothing. That's my curse."

"Those memories that I have only serve to remind me of what I've lost. And that's  _my_  curse. Be thankful that you'll never have to wake up remembering what it was like to wander down the hallway to check on him and you'll never have to know that in the last year of his life, he thought you were little more than a monster."

"He loved you."

"No, he loved  _you_."

"Regina…"

Regina shakes her head to interrupt before Emma can go any further. "I don't need your fumbling attempts at sympathy, Emma. We're not friends and even though we're both going through this, we're not doing it together. You have your family who wants and loves you, and you have your future. Embrace it."

"You really don't get it, do you? This future that you think that I have, well even if it were to happen, it couldn't ever replace Henry. Nothing could. You think you failed him, well so did I. We both could have done things differently, but we didn't and now here we are and I don't know what to do or how to get through this."

"I can't help you."

"Because you blame me?"

"Because I blame  _myself_  and because I don't deserve to get better," Regina whispers, her voice suddenly full of hurt and unspeakable agony and in that moment, she suddenly understands exactly why it is that her anger has abandoned her; her words to Emma had been horribly honest and real.

"And me? Do I deserve to get better?" Emma asks, her green eyes wide.

"No, but you will anyway because your family has the gift of resiliency. Now go home and leave me alone." And with a sharp almost angry flicker of her hand, purple smoke engulfs Emma, and she disappears, presumably back to the loft though to be honest she's not completely sure because her mind is too fogged over to really concentrate on anything besides "go away, go away, go away".

And then, once Emma is gone and she's alone with her mother and her father and all of the nightmares of a past that she'd helped to build, for the first time since the night of the funeral, Regina actually allows herself to feel something more than the thundering emptiness that's been haunting her.

She feels despair crawl as her mind begins to flash rapidly through pictures and memories, and oh God yes, remembering all of this is the worst of the curses.

She feels pain and fear and heartbreak and so many emotions that should be dark, but only feel like hurt and loss and loneliness.

She crumbles to the ground.

Archie had called it depression, and perhaps, she thinks, he'd been right about everything being pushed and away and now it's starting to surface in the worst of ways. Not anger, which she knows how to deal with, but pain. The kind that doesn't want to lash or hurt anyone, but rather simply wants to be comforted.

Only there's no one to do that because as usual, she's pushed everyone away.

And now she's alone with her memories of the son she'll never hold again.

She thinks about a cold rainy morning and mangled apple pancakes.

She thinks about first steps, and skinned knees.

She thinks of a four year old boy with missing teeth in the front whispering in almost conspiratorial tone, "I love you".

She thinks about a storybook, and a picture of a vengeful Queen.

She thinks about him refuting that she loved him.

She thinks him confirming that he'd loved her.

She thinks him resting in her arms as the trigger had started to tear everything apart; she thinks about him choosing her for the first and last time.

She thinks of a tree and a grave and a heart that will never beat again.

And then she shatters into a thousand pieces of glass.

Beautiful even as she breaks into the ugliest of shards.

The walls of the crypt react to her pain, and behind her, cement crumbles and cracks and everything begins to falls inwards as she screams out her grief and apologizes over and over and over again to a child who will never hear her.

She barely feels the arms around her, doesn't even realize that she's being pulled from the crypt as it collapses. Doesn't even seem aware that the woman who she'd held on the night of her son's funeral is now holding her.

"I know," is all Emma says, her mouth so close to Regina's ear. "I know."

And then, together, they both just let the grief come.

**TBC…**


	5. 5. Acceptance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have reached the end of this depressing journey. I hope I've done it justice.
> 
> Warnings: Some language, depression and a non graphic sexual scene between our ladies.
> 
> Thanks for all of the kind words!

 

_Life's so fragile and love's so pure_

_We can't hold on but we try_

_We watch how quickly it disappears_

_And we never know why_

_But I'm okay now;_ _Goodbye my friend_

_You can go now;_ _Goodbye my friend_

**-Linda Ronstadt/Goodbye My Friend**

*** ***

**ACCEPTANCE.**

*** ***

She knows that Emma is in the house; this realization is strange because she's just waking up and her head is pounding and she can still recall the groaning of concrete as her parents' tomb had started to collapse on her.

And she can still hear Emma whispering, "I know" into her ear. She can still feel Emma's arms wrapped around her, holding her as she'd held the Savior the night of Henry's funeral.

She thinks that through all of this mental chaos and anguish, her mind should be fogged over and dull, but even if it is, she's still somehow sharp enough to know that there is someone else besides her in her house, and unfortunately, there's really only one person who would dare stay here with her. There's only foolish girl who even through her own anger, hurt and fear remains far too stupid to just walk away and leave Regina to her quiet misery and pain.

She rises from her bed (notes that she's in her blue pajamas which means Emma had undressed and redressed her - likely so she could tend to injuries suffered thanks to the collapse of the tomb), and pulls a gray bathrobe around her. She ties it loosely in front of her and then makes her way down the hallway, and gets about halfway down before she reaches Henry's room. The door is open, and she doesn't even need to look in to know that Emma is in there.

But she does look inside, because there's a kind of morbid fascination to seeing Emma fighting for comfort within cool cotton Spiderman sheets that haven't been slept under in months. Henry had rejected the woman who had raised him, and this bedroom and everything within it. He had chosen cramped quarters and few personal belongings over her. He had chosen Emma and David and Snow and…she stops herself short, her eyes locked on Emma's sleeping form.

Because, she reminds herself almost frantically, in the end, Henry had chosen his adoptive mother. He had.

In the end, Henry had come back to her and stood beside her when the world had been shaking apart inside the mines beneath Storybrooke.

And the truth is that though she wishes that he hadn't come back and ended up saving her, she will always savor that he had, and she hates herself for that because if he had stuck to the original plan, he would be safe somewhere else.

With Emma, yes, but also safe and alive.

She looks down at her hands and arms and sees the cuts and gashes and scrapes there. There's a searing pain somewhere near her right hip and she can feel the pull of skin around her brow suggesting a laceration there, too. All of these injuries have been cleaned and the deepest of them have been dressed and bandaged, but she still looks as thought she'd been nearly buried alive just a few short hours prior.

She had been.

Because of her own magic which had exploded out of her thanks to her grief.

She feels that grief flashing hot within her now, strong and deep in her blood. The emptiness that had been there before had almost been soothing because it had come to her absent any kind of emotional attachments. Sure, it had felt wrong and she had felt wrong for feeling almost nothing at all, but at least she hadn't been hurting actively.

Not like she is now.

Everything hurts.

Her body and her soul and her heart.

Her heart worst of all.

Because yes, as it turns out, love really her greatest weakness. Loving Henry – her father and her son – has brought her to this place of having nothing worth living for or fighting for anymore. It's brought her to nothing.

She blinks slowly, and thinks of her mother. She'd spent so much time railing against everything that Cora had believed in, but perhaps her mother had been right all along, and the only way to live and accept pain is to not feel.

Perhaps, she thinks sadly, the only way to not get buried by everything is to remove even the slim chance of love destroying everything ever again.

She pushes her hand against her chest, and then after a brief second of pause, she feels her fingers slip beneath the warm skin, and she thinks about just how easy – _so very easy_ \- it would be to do as her mother had once done; it's not like she'd be all that much of a threat to the idiots around this insipid town. After all, her mother had been after power and control and Regina wants neither of those things right now. What she wants is peace so it's not like she would go on a murderous rampage absent her heart.

No, removing her heart and stowing it away somewhere safe wouldn't be about ambition, but rather about returning to a state of emotional silence. She thinks that maybe – just maybe - she can handle an every day like that.

But trying to live like this – feeling and remembering and grieving for a child who had always deserved better than what he'd gotten and had always wanted more than she could ever given – she doesn't think she can.

Her fingers dive deeper, and she feels a wave of dizziness slide over her.

"Regina?" she hears a groggy voice whisper. "What are you doing?"

"Feeling," Regina replies as her dark turbulent eyes flicker around Henry's bedroom. It's so very clean and though that is completely unlike the messy boy he'd been at heart, she can see him in every corner. If she tries, she thinks she can see him slung across his bed, his eyes glued on a comic book.

"I didn't save you from burying yourself alive so you could rip out your heart," Emma says, and there's a soft squeak of springs as she stands up.

"I didn't ask you to return. Or to save me."

"Maybe not, but you didn't send me very far away," Emma replies as she steps forward. "And at this point, saving you is pretty much what I do."

"I never asked for that."

"I know, but we both know we don't always get what we do ask for."

Regina doesn't answer that, her eyes instead resting on a picture frame off on his desk, one that shows her and Henry together. She has her arms around him and she can still so vividly recall the day the picture had been taken. He'd been annoyed with her and hadn't wanted to be held so close.

She'd needed proof that he would still let her put her arms around him.

"Regina," Emma says as the former queen winces when her hand connects with her own heart. "Please."

"Nothing is better," the former queen replies bitterly. "And that's what I was feeling before…before. Why do you have to keep ruining everything?"

"I don't think feeling nothing is the same as feeling better."

"And what the hell would you know of that? Just an hour ago, you were begging me to help you find a way to make someone pay for this."

"It's been longer than an hour," Emma says softly.

Regina's eyes spark dangerously. "What does that matter?"

"It matters. Time matters," Emma replies, and then she takes another step forward, so that she's close enough to reach out and touch Regina.

"Because you've convinced yourself that eventually all of this will be better and nothing will hurt as much as it does today?" Regina counters. "Have you actually thought about what I said? Thought about having another child?"

Where as before, she'd spoken of this to Emma without vitriol in her voice, now there's unmistakable bitterness. Strangely, not anger, though.

Because Henry's blood is on her hands, and though Emma should have let her die in the mine and even tonight, the fault for his death is on her and –

Emma doesn't let her finish the thought; suddenly she's surging forward and her hand is on Regina's arm and she's yanking hard enough to make Regina cry out in both surprise and fear. The arm and her hand pops free of her chest, and they're both just a little bit stunned to see her heart in her palm.

"Jesus," Emma whispers, her eyes wide and frightened.

"You've seen a heart before," Regina replies, and then she sighs in something like relief because she can feel the dullness sliding over her.

It feels oddly peaceful, and she wonders if this is what her mother had felt like for all of those years; had she been calm even with so much dark blood staining her skin and so many terrible deaths written across her soul?

"Not like this," Emma replies, practically shaking. "Put it back."

"I don't want to," Regina answers as she shoves Emma away.

"Put it back." Stronger now, more demanding.

"Why? So you can have someone who hurts as much as you do? That's what this is all about isn't it? It was nice to see me crack down the middle just as badly as you have been. It was good to see me weaker than you again."

"No," Emma protests, shaking her blonde mane fiercely. "I don't want you weak or hurt, Regina. I don't want that for either or us."

Regina dismisses her words with an impatient wave of her hand. "That's really why you came back for me. So you could be the Savior once more."

"I came back because you were about to kill yourself. Again."

"And again, you stopped me from it. Why?" Regina tilts her head.

"Because," Emma answers softly.

"That's not an answer, dear," Regina laughs, the sound cold and harsh.

"I'm not letting you die. I told you that before and I mean it now, too."

"Because you think keeping me alive will bring Henry back to us?"

"I think we've both accepted that that's not possible by now, but I'm still not going to let you die," Emma answers defiantly. "You're going to live."

"Like you are? Buried in misery every day, wishing for vengeance. Oh, Emma, I've already done that. I have no desire for a repeat performance."

"Put it back," Emma growls, once again stepping forward. Her hand is out, and it almost looks like she intends to make a grab for Regina's heart.

"No," Regina says with a laugh as she turns her heart over in her hand and looks at it with something like fascination. She has removed it before, of course, and there's always been a curious emotional disconnect that has occurred whenever she has, but never like this. Previously, it'd felt like she'd been trying to emote through a thin veil or something like that, but this is more like someone had just disconnected her ability to have emotions.

It's strange and horrible and completely wonderful.

"Henry wouldn't want –"

"If you finish that sentence, I'll kill you," Regina says simply. She blinks, then and her eyes are so dark and empty that it's impossible to doubt her words.

Emma has no doubt that Regina could and will kill anyone without a second thought or even a moment of remorse; she's just too cold right now.

"Because you're afraid that it's true?" the sheriff pushes, refusing to give up even though she knows that she probably just turn and walk away.

"Because I won't be manipulated into feeling by a dead child. Don't you think he manipulated me enough while he was alive?" Regina shakes her head in disgust. "I don't know why I didn't think to do this earlier."

"Maybe because you weren't depressed out of your mind then," Emma replies sharply, and her eyes are flickering around Henry's bedroom like she's searching for a plan. Knowing Emma Swan, she probably is.

"Oh, I'm not depressed," Regina replies. "I'm quite calm and centered."

"What you are is your mother, Regina."

"On the contrary, I have no desire to rip your heart out even though it would be a wonderful way to force you to just go away and do what I ask for once instead of insisting that you know what I need better than I do."

"Well that actually sounded like emotion. Did it hurt?" Emma taunts.

Regina's lips lift upwards into a furious sneer because yes, that had been emotion, and that's not supposed to happen. But it always does which is why even in her worst moments, when it would have been easier not to care, she's always ended up with her damaged heart remaining in her chest.

She's not willing to give up quite so easily this time, though.

That was just a spark of hurt.

Like a phantom emotion, she thinks almost hopefully.

"Leave my house, Miss Swan. _Leave my life_."

Emma considers this for a moment, and then says in a voice that's so terribly soft, "Put your heart back in your chest and I promise you that I will."

Regina laughs coldly, the sound echoing in the relative stillness of Henry's room. "You lie. You will never go away. You will never allow me peace."

"Put it back, and you have my word that I will stay clear of you. If you want to grieve alone in this horrible empty little castle of yours, you can do that, but you're going to grieve, Regina because yes, he deserves that from us."

"I don't want to."

"Too fucking bad. You're his mother, and that's my deal. Put your heart back where it belongs and then we can be done with each other."

"He was my son," Regina corrects, concentrating only on those words instead of a promise that she's not sure that she wants to believe anyway. "Until you came around and he stopped being that. He became yours."

"Even then, he was still your son," Emma replies. She points to the picture of Henry and Regina, the one Regina had looked at. "And he still is your son now. He will always be in that picture with you, Regina. Always."

"He didn't want to be in it to begin with."

"But there are a hundred other ones that he did want to be in."

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"Then tell me I'm wrong about what that picture means to you."

Regina swallows hard.

"Thought so. If I owe Henry not to go off on a vengeance quest, then you owe him to grieve for him and not just take the easy way of your pain."

"You would know," Regina shoots back. "But I guess since your parents helped you through your little alcoholism fit, everything is all better now."

Emma meets her eyes. "Nothing is better." She holds up her hands, which show deep scrapes across them, ones she likely had received while trying to pull Regina out of the crumbling vault. "But we don't get to pretend that he never existed and we don't get to pretend that he never mattered to us."

She reaches out again and puts her hand over Regina's. She places her fingers over the ones that are lightly cupping the former queen's darkened heart. There are streaks of red gleaming through as it pulses, signs of a purity that had been buried beneath so much hatred and so much fury.

Proof of what Henry had done to her, and how he had changed her without her ever even realizing it. But now, as she sees the red there, so vibrant beneath the harshness of so much black, she understands what she's lost.

"Put it back," Emma whispers as she watches a tear roll down Regina's face.

"No," Regina answers, but her voice is trembling, and she damns whatever it is within her that refuses to completely allow her the peace that removing her heart should have given her. Why had this worked so wonderfully for her mother and just barely for her? Why had feeling nothing but darkness been so easy for Cora and so impossible for her damaged daughter?

Emma seems to know that the fight is over; she lifts their joined palms, and though she's never done this before and she doesn't even quite understand how to do it, she presses their fingers into Regina's chest, and then watches in amazement as their hands disappear beneath layers of skin and bone.

"Let go," she tells Regina, and she wonders if she means just of her heart.

Regina swallows hard, and she struggles a bit, but it's already too late and a moment later, she's releasing her hold on her heart and then everything that she hadn't wanted to feel is surging through her like some kind of fire.

Including the guilt of having wanted to forget.

It's a tidal wave of so many emotions and feelings and so much pain.

But then Emma's hands are on her face, a palm on each cheek (and Regina wonders absently when Emma had removed then from her chest) and it's like she's suddenly some kind of absurd anchor. It's like she's the only thing that might keep Regina from drowning beneath the weight of everything.

And so she loses her mind just a little bit more, and she leans forward and kisses Emma as hard as she can and with everything that's she feeling.

When she pulls back, and they're both breathing hard and staring at each other like they just can't understand even though they understand perfectly, Regina says, her voice low and gravelly, "I want you to go away."

"Okay," Emma whispers, her back foot retreating just about an inch or so.

"But not yet." And then Regina is kissing her again, and there are tears falling everywhere, and neither one of them knows who it is that's crying.

She feels Emma's lips on her neck – so warm against skin that had turned to ice thanks to the absence of her heart. It's like fire against her and she gasps and rolls her head back to give Emma better access. She has a thought that this shouldn't happening and neither one of them truly wants this because why would they ever seek comfort in each other? Why would Emma Swan ever want to be touched by the woman who had caused her so much pain and why would Regina ever want the same from the person who had taken away everything that she had ever fought for? Why would they want this?

But they do. They do, they do, _they do_.

And then there's just the strange almost dizzying high of being touched by someone who understands far too well and the curious peace of being wanted by that same person even if it's only for something physical like this.

Then there's just Emma's hands pulling open the bathrobe and discarding it and Regina's trembling fingers slipping beneath denim and then the press of skin on skin and the sound of harsh breathing and whimpered cries as they fall to the floor together, wrapped up tight in each other's arms..

The sex is messy and rough and yet somehow tender in ways that make absolute sense and no sense at all. They touch and touch and touch.

And then they both cry together because they're on the floor of their son's room, and he'll never grow old enough to be righteously disgusted by the fact that his two mothers had just made love to each other on his carpet.

Emma rises up first, and dresses quickly. She starts to speak, but Regina shakes her head to silence her. "I won't remove it again," she promises.

"Then I'll keep my promise, too; I'll stay away from you."

"Good." She folds her arms over her naked body, and stares at the picture of she and Henry, wondering if Emma is right and there are better ones.

A few minutes later, she hears the front door close softly, and then, once again left to her solitude and her grief and smelling like the soft deodorant that Emma wears and dirt from her family vault, she falls to pieces.

 

 

***** *****

Emma manages to keep her promise; three long weeks pass before anyone sees or hears even so much as a peep from Regina, and the sheriff is anxious and agitated by this, but she manages to stop herself from asking anyone to go over and check on the former queen even though something curious and wet inside of her chest desperately wants her to do exactly that. It'd be a betrayal of their deal, she tells herself, and she assures herself that Regina had kept her part of it, and she's still alive and feeling inside her mansion.

Three weeks pass, and through the cold monotony of every day which feels pretty much the same, Emma tries desperately to remember why it is that she cares to get up every morning, and why she fights like so very hard to remind herself what it means to protect people and to be the sheriff of a town that only needs one when someone is trying to turn everything upside down.

Her parents hover, and care and they talk so much about everything good.

Every now and again, her mother mentions Regina and says that Archie keeps going over there to try and talk, but no one answers the door, and she's worried that maybe something terrible has happened, but then Snow does nothing.

Because what if she's right, and Regina is dead and cold and –

And Emma tries not to think about a crumbling vault and passionate kisses.

She tries not to remember a beating heart and whispered pleas for peace.

She refuses to dwell on the way Regina had pressed her mouth against her pulse point, and then just held it there like she had been trying to feel life.

Like she had been trying to find something to hold on to.

Three weeks pass, and Emma is keeping her promise.

It's the townies who ruin everything again. Their continued fear over a woman who just wants to be left alone - even though that solitude continues to destroy what's left of her heart a little bit more every day – forces Emma to leave the station and go find out why there's a panic of sorts at Granny's.

It's cold and it's snowing and the very last thing Emma wants to do is this because she already knows that these bored fools are just reacting to Regina's sudden reappearance because they have nothing better to do.

But she's the sheriff and these people will never let her have any peace.

She enters the diner and immediately spots Regina sitting in a booth in the back. She looks different: pale and sunken, like she hasn't been sleeping or eating or doing anything at all. Her normal shields are done and she's not even bothering to try to convince anyone that she's more than what she is.

Broken and defeated.

And there are people watching her and wondering.

Maybe thinking that this might be their chance for vengeance against a woman who probably wouldn't care to defend herself anymore.

Who knows what they're thinking.

In any case, that's not going to happen; no one is hurting Regina.

Emma steps over to the counter, and leans in towards Ruby. "What's up?"

"You mean with Regina?"

"You know I do."

"She just wanted coffee."

"So no grand threats then? No promises of destroyed happiness?"

"Nothing more than a polite thank you."

"Fantastic. Then what's the commotion all about?"

"It's Regina."

"She has a right to get some coffee in the morning. Even pancakes."

"We agree," Ruby replies softly. "But Emma, she's scaring people."

"That woman over there is scary?" Emma asks in disbelief.

"For different reasons than you think." Ruby shrugs her shoulders. "People may have hated who she was and what she'd done, maybe even hated her, but most of them loved Henry and they never wanted to see her like this."

"Not sure I buy that, but either way, what do you want me to do about it?"

"It's not what I want," Ruby says. "It's what she needs. A friend, I think."

Emma sighs, but then shakes her head. "We made a deal. She wants me to leave her alone, and that's what I'm going to do so unless she's causing a problem, I'm going to turn around and head back to the station, okay?"

"Emma –"

"No, Rubes, here's the thing: I get it that all of these people lived their lives through me and Henry and all of this, but both Regina and I are done owing people our lives. She has the right to grieve for Henry however she needs to and if that means that maybe she doesn't put on makeup and doesn't seem as strong for awhile, then I guess folks will have to deal with it."

"It doesn't bother you? Seeing her like that?" Ruby motions towards Regina who is staring down at a plate of pancakes that's barely been touched. She's holding up a newspaper in front of her face, but there's almost no chance that she's actually reading it; she has to be aware of the crowd around her.

And this isn't the Regina of old. This isn't the former queen who would have held up her head as high as possible and just ignored everyone simply to irritate them; this woman is far too raw and exposed for that, and even from where Emma is standing, she can see the way Regina's hands shake.

"Of course it does, but I made her a promise."

"To leave her alone?"

"Yes."

"Why would you make a promise like that?"

"Because all I have ever done since the day I met her is take from her."

"Emma –"

The sheriff waves her hand in the air because she's in no mood to hear someone else tell her that she hadn't actually turned Regina's life upside down. She doesn't want simple lies to be told. "I made her a promise."

Ruby grunts in protest, but finally relents, her shoulders sagging. "Okay."

Emma lets out a caught breath of relief. "Good. So let Regina try to her breakfast in peace, and do me a favor and tell everyone who's gawking at her to go home and get on with their day. Will you do that for me? Please?"

"Of course."

"Thank you." She smiles once more and then casts a look over at Regina.

And sees Regina looking back at her.

"Hey, Rubes," she says, her eyes still locked on Regina's dark sad miserably lonely ones.

"Yeah?"

"Send me the bill."

"Isn't that going against your promise?" Ruby asks, her eyebrow up.

"I think so," Emma admits with a soft chuckle, and then she turns around and walks out, the bell from the door jingling loudly behind her.

 

 

***** *****

"We had a deal, Emma," Regina growls out, foregoing any kind of greeting.

"You're not wearing your heels," Emma counters, looking up from her desk with something of a sheepish smile on her pale lips. She's hugely thankful that she hadn't been drinking coffee because Regina had snuck up on her, her flat boots having made almost no noise as she'd entered the station.

"You made me a promise," Regina snaps back as she steps forward.

"And I didn't break it. I haven't come near you since I left your house."

"But now you're paying for my breakfast."

"Actually, I probably just paid for Pongo's breakfast judging by how little you were eating." Her eyes sweep over Regina's frail frame; a heavy jacket covers her up, but she's never looked smaller than she does now. And frankly the lack of heels to make her stand taller isn't helping matters at all.

"Not the point, and you damn well know it," Regina retorts, taking another step towards Emma, the scuff of her boots bothering Emma more than she cares for. "You knew I'd come over here. You broke your promise by –"

"Okay, look, wait a second," Emma says with a shake of her head. "I simply paid for a meal because I wanted to do something nice for you. You chose to storm over here and make a big deal out of it. That's on you, Regina."

"I don't want nice from you. I don't want _anything_ from you. Why can't you get that through your idiotic head, Emma? I just want to be left alone."

Emma holds up her hands in surrender. "Okay. Got it. I'll leave you alone."

"Good. Let this be the last time we have this discussion," Regina says sharply, and then turns to leave, her head up now in a way that it wasn't at the diner; like she's now decided that it's time to prove she's still strong.

So, of course, Emma presses forward because this isn't about her or them or even Henry. This is all about Regina and how enough lies have been told during this heartbreak, and it's about how small she looks without her heels.

"I just have one more question first," Emma says softly.

Regina snaps around. "What?"

"One more question, and then I won't even so much as hold a door open for you. One more question and if a car is speeding for you, I'll let it hit you."

She sees Regina's lip curl into a sneer, and it's kind of a victory.

"Me, first," Regina replies, and Emma already knows that this will be cruel.

She sighs. "Go ahead."

"Are you still drinking, dear?" Regina asks, her eyebrow lifted in what's supposed to look haughty, but just comes off as a rather pathetic imitation of who she'd once been. "Have you managed to forget about our son yet?"

Emma nods her head slowly. "Haven't had a drink in a few weeks, and no, I haven't forgotten about our son. If it makes you feel better, I cried until I threw up last night. Oh and the nightmares still suck, too." Her green eyes meet Regina's and she sees the flinch there. Sees the regret. "My turn?"

Regina nods her head silently, the sadness in her eyes so clear and vivid.

"If you just wanted to be left alone, then why did you come out today? You had to know what would happen when you did. You saw what happened at the store a few weeks ago, and you know how these people tend to react to you just showing up unexpected. You had to know that I'd be called in to make sure you're not up to something. Even if we all know that you're not."

"I was hungry," Regina says simply, with something that looks like a pout.

"You've been shopping at night."

"No, I've been transporting food to my house at night and leaving money behind to pay for it so that you don't show up to arrest me for theft."

"Which makes me again ask why you came out today."

Regina turns her head slightly and looks at the far wall, her eyes closing.

"Regina," Emma says, standing up.

"He did one of those idiotic 'Who I Admire Most' letters in the third grade," Regina says softly, her voice just barely more than a whisper.

"I don't understand."

"I didn't know."

"Regina…"

The former queen turns around to face her once enemy. "I should be handling this so much better than I am. I've lost so many people over the years that I've been alive. Everyone that I have ever loved, I've lost, and you would think by now that I would be an expert at dealing with things."

"I'm not sure that the person who went on a four decades long vengeance quest to get revenge for the death of her fiancée can ever claim to be an expert at handling grief and loss," Emma notes with a small wry smile.

"That was different."

"Was it?"

"I'm a different person than I was then. I should be better at this."

"I don't think you have to be better, Regina; he was our son and we loved him," Emma says. "And we are both allowed to not handle this well."

"But you –"

"I'm faking it until I can figure out a way to not wake up every morning wanting to run away and pretend that I never met any of you," Emma corrects. "Because the reality is, Regina, that for as much as everyone wants to help me and be there for me – and they do - most of them just really want me to be better and to not break theirs hearts when I'm around. I make people sad because they know that everything I see reminds me of him, and they are so tired of being sad but that's not how it works for us."

"No, it's not," Regina agrees, her eyes flickering around anxiously.

"Regina, talk to me, okay? Tell me what's going on with you. _Please_."

"Why?"

"Because you're right; I don't want to be alone in this, and I do want to know that someone else actually understands what I'm feeling." She smiles sadly. "Even if I know that what you're going through is so much more."

"Because I knew him longer?"

"Because you were his mother, Regina. I was, too in a way, but…I think sometimes I hurt the most because I realize how much less I was his mother. How many of his stories I don't know and never will know now."

"It was a school assignment of his," Regina says suddenly, and Emma knows that they're once again talking about whatever it was that the former queen had found. It occurs to her that Regina probably isn't sleeping much these days so her mind isn't nearly as sharp or as on point as it should be.

"You said the third grade, right?"

Regina nods. "He must have completed it for class because there's a happy face on it, but I never saw it. I don't know why he didn't show me it."

"Do you have it with you?" Emma asks, her eyes dropping down to Regina's jacket. It's then that she notices that one of Regina's hands is deep within the pocket of it, and she has a pretty good idea as to why that is.

"Yes," Regina replies, but doesn't make any motion to pull it out.

"I'd like to see it if you'll let me." Emma pauses, then, a slight frown overtaking her lips as she adds, "You don't have to, though."

That choice seems to be enough to make Regina pull the note from her pocket. It's written in bright green letters on wrinkled yellow construction paper, and Henry's handwriting is amusingly messy. She holds it up to Emma, but doesn't yet hand it over. "I need someone else to see this."

"Okay."

"And prove to me that at one point, I didn't let him down."

"Okay."

She extends her arm, and Emma takes the paper from her. What's written on it is simple, but it's enough to make a lump form in her throat as she reads the words aloud, "I admire my mom because she makes chocolate chip cookies with five chips per cookie and peanut butter and celery with one scoop of peanut butter. I admire my mom because she reads ten pages a night to me, and even though she tells me that I should be sleeping, she always gives in when I ask her to read me ten more. I admire my mom because even when she's tired from work, she still always reads ten pages a night to me. I admire my mom because she's my mom and I love her."

"It's so childish," Regina whispers, swallowing as tears start to streak their way down her pale sunken in cheeks. "It's so silly and…and it means nothing now because it was just cookies and they didn't make him love me…"

"He loved you," Emma says as she steps around the desk. "He loved you."

"It's so quiet," Regina tells her, looking up at her.

"I know," Emma nods, moving so that they're standing almost nose-to-nose.

"I miss the sound of his feet."

"I miss the sound of his crunching."

"His crunching?" Regina asks, tilting her head in confusion.

"He insisted on eating his cereal dry. It used to drive me up a wall to listen to him crunching his way through a bowl of Captain Crunch. I…I miss it."

"Oh. I didn't let him eat cereal. Not that one, anyway," Regina says dully, a frown creasing her brow as she turns the absurd thought over in his head that maybe if she had, maybe he wouldn't have turned away from her.

Emma reads her mind perfectly, of course. "Hey," she says, "Lack of sugary cereal isn't what hurt your relationship with Henry. It's also not what made him choose to be with you when we all thought that we were going to die. He chose to be in the cave with us because he loved us. All of us."

She presses the note back into Regina's hand, and then leans forward and in the same motion, hugs her tight. Emma's never been much of a hugger, but this feels right and needed for both of them. Because she's not hiding the pain that doubles her over in the middle of the night, and Regina can't.

There's a pause, a bit of hesitation, and then Regina's head is against her shoulder, and her arms are around her waist, and she's just holding on.

And Emma exhales for a moment and then tightens her arms, and pulls her even closer, pressing the lightest of kisses against Regina's pulse point.

Regina had done that to her in the middle of their lovemaking several weeks earlier. Then, it'd been about having a connection to someone. Now, it's about ensuring that Regina's heart is still beating and that she's still living.

Now it's about understanding that even if promises have been broken and pain has been exposed, perhaps for even just a moment, they're not alone.

 

 

***** *****

She sends a text later that evening – about five hours after Regina had just broken away from the hug and left the station without another word. It takes her almost twenty minutes to decide on the wording, and Mary Margaret is standing over her shoulder looking like she both approves and doesn't approve of Emma reaching out to Regina, but she says not a word.

She doesn't even ask what the message means when Emma sends it.

She simply brings over a cup of cocoa with cinnamon on it, puts it down in front of Emma, and then leans over and kisses her daughter on the head.

 

 

***** *****

Regina is sitting in her office back at the mansion nursing a tumbler of whiskey when her cell phone goes off. She startles at first because no one has called her in weeks, but then she leans forward and looks at the screen.

And scowls.

And then she allows herself the faintest of bemused smiles.

Because on the screen are the words: **AM I STILL BEING HELD TO MY PROMISE?**

She leans back in her chair and then takes a long drink from the glass.

 

 

***** *****

It's three in the morning when Regina finally chooses to answer the text, and Emma thinks that considering how dead tired she is, she should be annoyed, but she's actually rather amused and even relieved to see some of the former queen's old attitude surfacing even if it's at her expense.

She rolls over and picks up her cell. It says:  **WELL YOU ARE YOUR MOTHER'S DAUGHTER, I SUPPOSE. I PLAN TO BRING FLOWERS TO HENRY IN THE MORNING. YOU MAY JOIN ME IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO.**

She quickly types back the question of what time, and mere seconds later even though it's in the middle of the night, she gets an answer that says ten in the morning and not a minute later.

 

 

***** *****

Regina waits and waits and waits, and just as she's sure that Emma will decline the invitation and just as she's beginning to feel like a complete idiot for even extending the invitation in the first place because she's convinced herself that it was absurdity to think that maybe they could be there for each other until it's no longer needed, her phone buzzes.

She picks it up, takes a breath and reads: **I'LL BE THERE. THANK YOU.**

She puts the phone down, and wonders if she's ready for what's to come in the morning. It's not yet letting go or moving on, and she's honestly not sure she'll ever be able to do either of those things, but she has the need to be doing something even that something is finding a way to talk to Henry.

Even if that something is being done with Henry's other mother.

She thinks that Emma will understand, and though part of her is so very afraid that she's making herself so weak – weaker than she already is – in front of Emma, and she could end up being even more destroyed by this, the rest of her has the urgent need to trust someone because she doesn't want to be alone with this pain.

She doesn't want to be alone at all anymore.

She reaches for the crumpled piece of construction paper on the nightstand and holds it up. She traces a nail over the gold happy face sticker affixed to the paper and then brings the note to her chest and holds it there as she starts to cry. Somewhere beneath his words, she feels her own heart beating.

 

 

***** *****

"Hey," Emma says as she walks across the wet grass towards where Henry's tombstone is. It's in the brightest part of the cemetery, and sunlight splashes down against it, illuminating his name sketched into the hard stone.

"You're on time," Regina notes.

"It was important," Emma says, and then offers her a cup of coffee. Her eyes flicker down to the beautifully bright flowers next to the headstone, and that's when she notices that Regina is wearing a pair of slightly high heeled boots instead of flat ones. She doesn't say anything, doesn't draw attention to them because this isn't about that, but she thinks that it's nice to see the former queen trying to find her strength again. She thinks that maybe that's what they bring out in each other - not only the ability to be honest, but also the need to be able to stand tall and defiant with the other one.

She thinks that maybe they give each other some weird kind of strength that no one else would ever understand.

Regina - completely oblivious to this entire entire monologue - nods her head slowly, and then takes the coffee with a thin smile. After a moment, she says softly, "I didn't just come here to bring flowers."

"I didn't think you did," Emma tells her. "Kid inherited my green thumb, and I don't think he would have had as much appreciation for the best of your garden. Now if you'd brought comic books or red vines, well maybe."

Regina chuckles. "His favorite was actually those butterscotch candies. I used to keep a bowl of them on my desk in my home office, and he would always grab handfuls of them when he thought I wasn't paying attention."

"I have to admit, they were pretty damned good," Emma says. Off Regina's curious look, she explains, "I found them in his pockets after the third time he sent his jeans through a load of wash with a bunch of them in there."

"Ah, yes. I learned that lesson the hard way, too. Or rather Joey the frog did." She wrinkles her nose up in remembered disgust when she says this.

"He kept a frog in his pocket?"

"When he was about six or seven or so, he kept everything in his pockets, and that poor frog must have been the laziest one ever born because he didn't even try to escape. That I know of, anyway. It was…quite foul."

"I bet."

They let the moment hang between them, and then Regina says, "I need to be able to talk to my son, Emma. I know that sounds insane, but I can't just let him go. I need to be able to…I need him be with me still." She looks down at the tombstone. "People in this town already think I'm crazy or about to destroy everyone all over again, but all I want is to have a place where I can come and talk to him and let him speak to me. Is that strange?"

"No, I don't think it's strange at all," Emma replies with a shrug. "I guess it just depends on if you're ready to listen to what he has to say."

"Are you?"

Emma frowns. "Some days, sure. Other days, I think I can't…I can't."

"I know."

Regina sinks down to the grass, and Emma has a moment of thinking how strange it is to see the former queen on her knees like this, but then she shakes the thoughts away and just waits for what's coming next. She doesn't quite understand her role in this, and she doesn't want to push.

But then Regina is extending a hand, and Emma just reaches out and takes it because it is so much better to do this with someone who understands that there are days when the darkness inside is so much stronger than the hope.

That there are days when even the memories of Henry aren't strong enough to blot out the pain of his loss or the reality that he's never coming back.

And there are still days when she wants to find a way back to Neverland, and she wants to find Peter Pan and turn him into paste and red dust.

She sits down next to Regina, and then they both lean backwards against the headstone, the two of them sitting completely side by side. "Tell me a story," Emma says after a moment. "Tell me something that doesn't hurt."

"Only if you'll do the same."

"I can do that."

She reaches out then and taps her fingers against the top of Regina's hand, and it's her request for Regina to open her hand and let her take it because it feels like after all they've shared and what they're about to share that a simple touch shouldn't be too much, but then Regina is looking at her, and Emma thinks that maybe she's wondering about a promise that Emma just can't seem to find a way to really keep no matter how much she tries to.

But then she sighs quietly, and turns her hand and Emma takes it.

"You're never going to get out of my life, are you?" Regina asks, and for once it doesn't sound like she's completely enraged about this realization.

"You invited me back into it."

"After you bought me breakfast."

"I was just trying to be nice."

"That's always been your problem."

"I'm sorry."

Regina turns her head, stares at Emma for a long moment and then turns away again and looks outwards towards the snow-capped trees. "Don't be," she says. "I think without you I would have crushed my own heart. Turns out that removing it isn't near enough to stop the pain. Not for me, anyway."

"Are you pissed at me for stopping you?"

"Yes. I'm also pissed at you for kissing me."

"You kissed me," Emma corrects, unable to hide her amusement.

"You have a faulty memory, Sheriff."

Emma laughs. "The hell I do." Then, growing serious, she says, "But for what it's worth, I'm glad that I did stop you, though. Because though no one wants to admit it because I'm the Savior, I'm selfish, Regina, and I need someone right now as much as you do. My parents want so badly to help me through this but I'm not ready for that yet, and everything that they have ever lost, they've always eventually gotten back. I don't think they understand never again, and I don't really want them to have to."

"Lucky us that we do."

"Lucky us," Emma echoes. She squeezes Regina's hand. "So how about that story?"

Regina thinks for a moment, and then chuckles. "I bought him a bike for his seventh birthday. It was tall and beautiful and majestic. And fifty minutes after he stepped onto it, he ran it through two of my hedges and took out Archie and Pongo. And that was just day one of him and his grand stead."

"He thought his bike was his horse?"

"I suppose I should have known then that I had a knight in training."

"I would have liked to have seen him on a horse."

"Me, too," Regina says, tears in her eyes.

"This wasn't supposed to hurt," Emma notes.

"I think that maybe…I think that maybe it's too early not to hurt no matter what story we try to tell," Regina suggests. "I think even the ones that make us laugh remind me…us that he's gone and he's not...that he's gone."

"Yeah," Emma admits, flicking tears away from her own eyes.

"It's your turn," Regina says. "Tell me about when he was born."

"So much for good memories, huh?"

"It is a good memory, Emma," Regina insists, feeling oddly strong – or at least stronger - for the first time in a long while. "Maybe it hurt terribly to let him go that day, but it hurts now, too; I think…I think I would rather remember when he came into this world than how he went out of it."

"You're right," Emma agrees. "He had lungs. A damned strong a set of them."

Regina smiles, and then drops her head back against the tombstone and then she just listens as Emma tells her about Henry's first moments of life.

The whole time, she holds Emma's hands and lets Emma hold hers.

 

 

**-Fin**


End file.
